


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 






MILITARY SKETCHES AND STORIES 


Camps and Quarters 


BY 


ARCHIBALD FORBES 

ti 


GEORGE HENTY 

AND 

CHARLES WILLIAMS 


'"iVlAY 18188 ^ 


NEW YORK 

WARD, LOCK AND CO. 
35 Bond Street 
1889 


(AUTHORS^ EDITION) 



All rights reserved 



TROWS 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY| 
NEW YORK. 




CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Introduction i 

Jellypod ; ALIAS The Muleteer 6 

A Relict and a Relic 19 

A Passing Face 25 

Faithful to the Death 30 

Zeal in the Ranks 43 

The Divine Figure from the North 47 

Achmet’s Treason . . , , , • , . *56 

Turning the Tables ' . *73 

The Building of the Yacht 83 


Out with the Red-Shirts 


102 



INTRODUCTION, 



It is right that I should say at once how I, Jack Hambleton, came 
to have undertaken the getting out, or whatever it is called, of 
these stories. I need not tell any one who knows me that it is 
not because 1 like it but I do it from a sense of justice to myself, 
as you will see late** n. As to the stories themselves, I am not 
responsible for theit oeing written down correctly. Fortunately I 
was asleep a good part of the time while they were being told, 
and I don’t remember much that I did hear, and don’t want to. 
My cousin Lucy wrote them down. Why she should have 
bothered herself to do so is more than any one can well imagine, 
but I believe myself that she couldn’t sleep at the time. She had 
something on her mind, and that always keeps people awake — at 
least so I have heard, for I never have anything on my mind — and, 
it ended in her giving me no end of disappointment and annoy- 
ance, and in handicapping her chances of happiness in life. 
However, she did write them down, and I borrowed the book — of 
course I did not tell her why — and got one of those type-writing 
women to copy it out, because I think that the question between 
Lucy and me ought to be set down squarely, for I am sure that 
any one who comes to read the awful balderdash I had to listen 
to, will agree with me that no fellow could have looked pleasant 
over it, and that Lucy was altogether too hard upon me. 

One has often heard of men being persecuted by bores. Until 
lately I have had no experience that way, for naturally if I found 
a fellow beginning to bore me with his talk, I simply left him to 
himself, and there was an end of it ; but unfortunately there are 
times when a man can’t help himself, and this was what recently 
happened to me. I was down staying with Sir John Hambleton 
in the Midlands for a fortnight’s hunting. Sir John is my uncle, 
and it is a pleasant house to stay in. There are generally a good 
set of people there, and my cousin Lucy is a capital hand at 
keeping things going, and as nice a girl all round as you want to 
meet, though I don’t always quite understand her, and have a sort 
of idea sometimes that she is making fun of me, which of course is 



2 


Camps and Quarters. 

absurd when I am eight years older than she is, and expect to 
get my troop in the Blues before long. 

Well, we had been having a pleasant time of it, when on the 
last day of hunting I came an awful cropper over a wire that a 
rascally farmer had run along in his fence. I broke my collar- 
bone, and the brute of a horse, in trying to get up, somehow put 
his foot on my ankle and damaged it pretty badly, so there I was 
laid up for a month certain. I didn’t so much m‘nd that, for it 
was rather nice having Lucy fussing about me. Of course the days 
were rather long, for she could not always be in the study, which 
had been turned into my special den, and when one had once 
read the sporting papers there wasn^t much to do, for novels bore 
me horribly, and as to politics I never can make head or tail of 
ihem — though of course I agree with my uncle in hating Gladstone, 
Parnell, and all that lot. However, things would have gone on 
very well if it hadn't been that three men came to the house. Lucy 
told me the day before that they were coming, and made rather a 
mystery about it, and I hate mysteries. She said, “ There are three 
men coming to-morrow. Jack, for a few days, who will enliven 
your solitude.” “Who are they?” I naturally asked. “Never 
mind who they are. Jack — you will soon find that out for yourself. 
They will brighten you up wonderfully.” Of course I thought that 
Sir John had done the kind thing, and had asked down two or three 
men of my own set ; and I was above a bit astonished and a trifle 
put out when next day Lucy brought in three fellows I had never 
seen before — not young fellows either, but regular old stagers — 
and said, “This is my cousin. Jack Hambleton, whom I have been 

telling you about. Jack, these are ” and then she said three 

names I had never heard of. 

Perhaps fellows who read newspapers might have heard of them, 
but as I don’t bore myself that way I never had, and didn’t know 
them from Adam. One was a big fat chap with a beard, the 
other two were biggish fellows too. They had moustaches, but no 
beards or whiskers. One of them had, I soon saw, the remains of 
a military carriage about him, not our modern style at all, 
you know, but the sort of thing they fancied the right thing in 
Dragoon regiments thirty years ago. The third one I couldn’t 
quite make out, but it seemed to me he too had a sort of half- 
drilled sort of manner about him. It struck me he might have 
belonged to one of the Irish Militia Corps, or to a West India 
regiment, or something of that sort. 

Lucy left us to ourselves, and I handed them my box of cigars, 
but they shook their heads and drew out wooden pipes, and making 
themselves uncommonly comfortable and at home in three of 
the study arm-chairs by the fire, were soon blowing a cloud of the 
most detestable tobacco smoke. Of course I had to say something, 
because I was a sort of host, don’t you see. So I asked them if they 
were down for a little hunting ; and would you believe me, not one 


Introduction. 


3 


of the three cared for hunting. So then after thinking a bit I said, 
“ Ah ! then you have come down for a week among Sir John's long- 
tails.” Then it turned out that none of the fellows cared much for 
shooting. Well, after that there was an end of it as far as I was 
concerned, except that I asked who they fancied for next year’s 
Derby ; and you will hardly conceive it possible, but it is a fact that 
not one of them knew the name of a horse that was in the running ! 

After that I didn’t say any more. What was a fellow to talk 
about with men who didn’t hunt or shoot, and were so beastly 
ignorant that they didn’t know the name of the favourite for 
the Derby ? So they began to talk to each other, and I listened 
and wondered who on earth they could be. I have come across 
some scientific professor-chaps who know nothing except about 
stars or fishes or those cholera things that go floating about in the 
air, but these didn’t look like that sort of thing. None of the three 
was bald or wore spectacles or anything of that sort. They soon 
got into all sorts of arguments. I never saw such chaps for 
contradicting each other ; as soon as one said a thing another 
jumped down his throat. The rummest affair was the things they 
talked about First of all they had a tremendous jaw over the 
distance from Peshawar to the head of the Khyber Pass. They all 
seemed to know every foot of the way, and the crackjaw names of 
all the places on the road, and they went on at it till I wished they 
were all those what-do-you-call-’em chaps one reads of, who make a 
point of going from one place to another, rolling over in the dust or 
working along like a caterpillar or something of that sort, and had 
to go the whole distance. Then one of them happened to say 
something about Egypt, and the others were down upon him at 
once, and they went at it tooth and nail ; then they jumped to 
America, and squabbled over some chaps they called Molly 
something or other, who, as far as I could make out, worked in 
mines, and passed their odd time in cutting each other’s throats. 
Then they got back to Europe, and there wasn’t a country nor, as 
far as I could see, a village that they did not pretend to know all 
about. I came to the conclusion at last that they were either the 
biggest liars that ever lived, or some of those Geographical Society 
fellows who I have heard get things up from maps and then pre- 
tend to know a lot more about them than people who have been 
living there for years. 

Sometimes I noticed one of them pretended to have been to 
some place that the other fellows didn’t know enough to lie about, 
and then they sat quiet and listened as if they really thought he 
was saying something worth hearing. One fellow talked like a 
book about Armenia, and then another had his innings about the 
Cape, and then the fat man laid down the law about Abyssinia 
and Ashanti, and had a turn about the Crimea into the bargain. 
At one time I thought my uncle, who is an awfully good-hearted 
fellow, must have invited three lunatics down for a change from 

B 2 


4 


Camps and Quarters, 


Hanwell or some of those places where they keep madmen, 
only I thought he would hardly have done that with Lucy in the 
house. Then I remembered that when I was at Eton some chap 
who was always reading books told me a story out of one of Lever’s 
novels about a fellow who went to a dinner where there were a 
lot of couriers, and thought for a time he had fallen among lunatics. 
Still these men didn’t look like couriers ; besides, even Lucy would 
hardly play such a trick on me as to introduce couriers to me. 
I couldn’t think of anything else ; thinking makes my head ache 
at the best of times, and when a man has got a broken collar-bone 
and a damaged ankle he can’t be expected to bother himself. So 
I listened until my head was in a whirl, and then I fell asleep and 
dreamt I had somehow got into a water-mill, and that the 
machinery was working away all round me. I should think that 
I must have slept an hour and a half, and I suppose those fellows 
must have been at it the whole time ; anyhow, when I woke they 
were just getting up from their chairs and going out, they said, for 
an hour’s turn, to give them an appetite for dinner. 

From that time all peace and quietude were gone. One or 
other of those fellows was for ever coming in, sometimes all of 
them together, and telling me the most awfully prosy yarns. I 
really believe they meant well, and thought they were amusing 
me, instead of driving me almost mad with their talk. The worst 
of it was, Lucy seemed to like it, or at least she pretended to like 
it, for no one could really have cared about listening to their long- 
winded stories. Anyhow, she would come in and sit sometimes 
and listen to them as if she were in the stalls of a theatre. How 
she did it I don’t know; and if I yawned — and I couldn’t help it 
sometimes, she would frown at me as if I was committing some 
horrid kind of offence. It was only occasionally I got her alone 
now. Before, she used to be wonderfully nice, and I really had 
begun to think that Lucy would make an awfully good sort of 
wife, and that I should tell her so some day ; but now she seemed 
in such a restless sort of mood, there was no talking seriously to 
her. I implored her over and over again to tell me who these 
men were, but there was no gettir-g anything out of her. I 
introduced them to you. Jack,” she always said, “ and if you are so 
ignorant that you don’t know who they are, I certainly shall not 
enlighten you.” 

“ I don’t so much care about that, Lucy,” I urged, “ it doesn’t 
matter to me if they are the Emperors of Russia and Germany 
and Austria in disguise ; what I want is for you to keep them away 
from me, for if this goes on, they will talk me out of my seven 
senses with their eternal inventions and lies. Now, if they would 
but make up good stories about a run to hounds, or something about 
racing, or trainers, or jockeys, or that sort of thing, I could put up 
with it, that is to say, with a little of it.” 

“My dear Jack,” she said, and she really said it so seriously, 


Introduction, 


5 


• 

that for a moment I thought she meant it, though of course she 
didn’t, “ I never thought you were clever, but I did not think 
you were quite so stupid as this before,” and then she went out 
and left me to myself. Of course she didn’t mean this, still I 
thought I would try to get to the bottom of it, and so the next 
time they sauntered in, and one of them began a story, I thought I 
would really try to find out if there was anything in it, and I lis- 
tened attentively while he poured out some wearisome balderdash ; 
but it was too great an exertion to keep up long, and I gave it up 
as a bad job after listening to one or two of their yarns. 

I may say at once that the stories here given are but a few of 
those that I was condemned to listen to, for, of course, it was only 
those which were told when Lucy happened to be in the room that 
were put down by her. As to the rest, I am happy to say they 
have left no impression whatever upon my mind. The following 
story was the result of something that was said about some one 
being a zealous officer. Of course I am quite of opinion myself 
that the fellows who get the name of being zealous officers, are 
the greatest nuisances in the army. They are the sort of men who 
can never let well alone ; they are always wanting to introduce some 
new-fangled notion. It is owing to them one is always being 
obliged to learn new drills. They are always chopping and 
changing about, not only as to work, but as to all sorts of 
ridiculous trifles such as the accoutrements you shall wear, and the 
best way of slinging the men’s carbines, and things of that sort, as 
if it could matter a rap one way or the other. However, this started 
them, and one of them began a dreary yarn about a man who came 
from the militia into the cavalry, and who must have been an 
awful fellow to have in the regiment with you. Of course we do 
not have fellows like that in the household troops. 




5eltoob; alias Zhc Muleteer. 

I NEED not say that neither of these was the name by which 
he appeared in the Army List. The Muleteer was not his original by- 
name, although there may be a good many people who never knew 
him by another. When I remember him first — that was about 
thirty years ago — he was familiarly known in the cavalry regiment 
he had then recently joined as Jellypod. I knew more of him 
as Jellypod than I did of him after he came to be known by the 
other name ; but have you never noticed how completely a later 
by-name supersedes an earlier .? I think of him habitually as the 
Muleteer, and had even to tax my memory to recollect the earlier 
Jellypod appellation. 

He came to the Dung-punchers from a militia regiment. Now- 
adays the militia are the chartered and approved vestibule to the 
regular army : and it is quite the thing for a youngster to go 
straight from the Outlandshire Rurals into the Grenadier Guards 
or the Blues. But it was a different thing thirty years ago, when 
the aspiring militiaman had to purchase, and when it was regarded 
as a mild form of impertinence on his part if he did not creep 
humbly into some unpretentious high-low regiment. But this 
man had actually bought into cavalry, and what made his outre- 
Guidance the more marked was that he had come from a London 
militia regiment. No doubt times are changed, and the salt 
of the earth do their mimic soldiery in the corps which now 
swagger as the loth battalion of the Royal Fusiliers or the 2ist bat- 
talion of the Rifle Brigade. But thirty years ago the metropolitan 
and suburban militias were not held in lofty esteem. In a county 
militia regiment you might lay your account with finding a con- 
siderable sprinkling of younger sons of the territorial families, and 
probably the major would be a man who had served in the regulars, 
and had gone in for the local corps when he married and retired 
to settle down on his patrimonial estate. But the London regi- 
ments had not this .stamp of officerhood. As like as not the Colonel 
Commandant would be a soap-boiler engaged in the active duties 
of his odoriferous profession. You would find no doubt ex-regulars 
holding commission.s, but they were rather of the copper captain 
variety, who bound their militia commissions as phylacteries on their 




1 


Jellypod ; alias The Muleteer, 

foreheads in evidence that their claim to the title of officer and 
gentleman was unimpaired by the little cloud under which they 
had retired from more active service. A militia commission has 
always been more or less of a useful item of stock in trade to a 
man living by^ his wits ; and gentlemen of this type were sand- 
wiched freely in the old days in the London regiments between 
the dashing scions of aldermen and the jeunesse doree of the Stock 
Exchange. 

Jellypod was a good sort of fellow in his way, but he did not hit 
it off with the Dung-punchers. For one thing he was a married 
man with two children. Now in the matter of matrimony among 
the officers, the Dung-punchers might have belonged to the army 
of the late lamented Cetewayo. Old Guardlex the colonel — he 
had been chief ever since the Crimea, and it was currently believed 
that he had sworn to live to a hundred and to die in the command of 
the Dung-punchers, resolutely refusing promotion — old Colonel 
Guardlex had laid down the rule that no officer should marry and 
remain in the regiment who was not at least half way up among 
the captains. A junior captain might wed, although frowned 
upon, on giving his pledge to send in his papers within the year ; 
but lo ! here was a cornet joining, not only with a wife, but with 
a wife who was a foreigner, and there was the additional aggravation 
of brats. 

Then Jellypod, subsequently the Muleteer, had a modest con- 
fidence in himself. Among his burglars and pickpockets' he had 
learnt foot drill thoroughly, and the first time he turned out to 
recruits’ drill in the barrack square, had affably set the “ regimental ” 
right in regard to a word of command. He had studied Jomini, 
had detected the superficiality of Hamley’s “ Operations of War,’’’ 
and had visited scientifically the battlefields of 1859 in Northern 
Italy. He had not been in the Dung-punchers a week before he had 
tendered every officer a printed copy of an (undelivered) lecture 
before the United Service Institution on the utility of cavalry as a 
support to infantry. Before a fortnight was over he had confided 
to the adjutant, who — of course I mean the fine old ranker adjutant — 
was always very friendly and confidential with newly joined officers, 
that he regarded the regimental system of the Dung-punchers as 
reprehensibly slack ; and that he thought every one under the 
rank of field-officer, should invariably attend morning and evening 
stables. One fine day after luncheon he followed the chief into the 
anteroom and asked him whether he would have any objections to 
a project he (Jellypod) had conceived, that he should give a course 
of evening lectures in the garrison library to the noncommissioned 
officers of the regiment on the German cavalry method of working 
by “fours.” Old Guardlex stared at him grimly from under his 
shaggy eyebrows for the space of about a minute, deliberately 
expectorated into the grate, then rose, and without a word, 
stalked out of the room. Jellypod did not win much favour from 


8 


Camps and Quarters. 

the fat old quartermaster, when he suggested to that v/orthy that 
the regimental meat should be cast every morning, until the 
contractor realized that the second class beef he was in the practice j 
of sending in would no longer be accepted. 

With all the good will in the world, Jellypod did not stand well 
in the eyes of the men of the troop to which he was posted as 
cornet. He began badly. As is usual when a new officer’s furniture 
arrives, a squad of men under a corporal were detailed to unload 
the Jellypod furniture from the vans in which it had come down 
from town. The work done — you may be sure the fellows had some 
chaff among themselves about the cradle, which presented to them 
a strange anomaly in being part of a cornet’s goods and chattels-— 
the oldest soldier, as the custom is, formed up to Jellypod, and 
saluting, intimated the anxiety of himself and his comrades to 
drink that officer’s health. Jellypod wasn’t a bit mean, but he 
regarded this attempt to “ pike ” him as an impertinence, and 
ordered the man about his business, threatening to report him. 
He did report him to the corporal, who told him bluntly he 
thought the “ kick” quite natural — the work being outside the men’s 
regular duty, and it being an invariable custom to reward a fatigue 
party, on this kind of service, with the price of a drink round. 
In fact the honest corporal as good as hinted that he himself felt 
rather dry. But Jellypod stood on the principle of the thing, and 
refused to contribute toward the consumption of intoxicating fluids ; 
he himself was a teetotaler. It was a high sense of principle again 
which impelled him to refuse to fall in with the immemorial 
practice of paying his footing the first time he entered the riding- 
school. He would have stood out even against the fee to the 
riding-master, taking the ground that among the duties for which he 
drew his pay was the instruction in equitation of the officer-recruit as 
well as of the soldier-recruit ; but old Voyage had taken his grievance 
to the colonel, who curtly ordered Jellypod not to let him hear any 
more “ of this d — d nonsense.” But he stood out against the 
dustoor to the underlings of the riding-school. Then the grim 
old rough- riding sergeant swore a grizzly oath, and took the 
corporal and the rough-riders to witness, that if Mr. Jellypod did 
not rue his meanness before he was dismissed riding-drill, then his 
name was not old Bob Swash. And in truth it was a bad morning’s 
work for Jellypod when he declined to fork out that sovereign as 
he trod the tan for the first time ; for it came to pass that he and 
that same tan became and remained exceptionally intimate. 

The universal wonder was why Jellypod should have come into 
cavalry. He was a fine-looking, florid man of some seven and 
twenty, with a full round face,' encircled by long chestnut whiskers. 
He was straight and square-shouldered, but had already begun to 
run into flesh, exhibiting a considerable protuberance in front, 
whence his by-name ; and in point of fact exhibiting the reverse 
of attenuation when taken in reverse. With his round fleshy thighs, 


9 


Jellypod ; alias The Muleteer. 

he looked just the sort of man to have a washball style of seat in 
any position, and bound to endure much in the effort to obtain 
the correct cavalry seat of the period, then much longer and less 
easy to acquire than now. 

The Dung-punchers hunted to a man : they would have hunted 
every day of the week, including Sunday, if their studs had run to 
it, and if there had been a sufficiency of attainable meets. The 
chief was the keenest of any ; the prime article of his simple faith 
was that so long as unfortunately there was no fighting to be done, 
the chief end of the cavalryman was to gallop after hounds. So, the 
day Jellypod came to the regiment, the chief, never dreaming that 
there was any need to ask him whether he hunted, simply put the 
question, “ How many hunters are you bringing ; how many days a 
•week do you care to hunt?” You might have knocked him down 
with a feather — he was stricken absolutely dumb, when Jellypod, 
in the most matter-of-fact way replied, — 

“ I am bringing no hunters, sir. I don’t think hunting is an 
amusement I should care about. The fact is, I really don’t know 
howto ride. I don’t believe I was ever on the outside of ahorse in 
my life. Of course I must learn now that I am in a cavalry 
regiment ; and I daresay I shall find no difficulty in purchasing a 
steady, docile charger.” 

When he joined he had bought the first charger of the officer 
whose retirement created the vacancy which made room for him, a 
perfect broken thoroughbred old chestnut, cunning in riding- 
school drill, knowing every command as if it had studied the book 
of the manige. This was a great pull for Jellypod; if only he 
could have kept in the saddle, the gallant old horse would have 
kept him right. But with “stirrups up” he couldn’t keep in the 
saddle had his life depended on doing so. At a walk he was all right; 
but as soon as the word “ Trot ! ” was given, he was all over the place. 
If he hung on by his eyelids for a round or two, old Swash, the 
non-payment of footing rankling in his mind, would touch up the 
old chestnut with the long whip ; and then Jellypod would shut his 
eyes and gently roll off the saddle on to the tan. The man, however, 
had both pluck and perseverance. He never did get his seat with- 
out stirrups, but when these were allowed to the ride, he did better ; 
trusting to them and to the bridoon to an unjustifiable extent, and 
rolling about, as old Swash used to say, “ like an apple in a bucket” 
— only the expression was mostly a good deal coarser ; but coming 
to grief altogether with much greater rarity. To the last he was 
the most abject duffer at “ heads and posts,” and it was well that 
the old chestnut carried a good head, else every time he and his 
rider went over the bar, the latter would have shot bodily over the 
former’s ears. Altogether, Jellypod had a good six months in the 
school before he was dismissed riding-drill, and then it was only 
because, as the riding-master said, he could not be bothered with 
him any longer. 


lo Camps and Quarters. 

Jellypod had developed into considerable of a martinet even before 
he ceased to be a recruit and blossomed forth as a “ duty soldier.” 
There was not an officer in the regiment who had so keen an eye 
for specks of rust in that awkward cranny at the back of a big bit, 
as it hung with specious resplendency between the burnished 
stirrup-irons. Trouble was no object to Jellypod in his quest after 
evidences of the dragoon’s perfunctoriness. He was the first officer 
in the British Cavalry— ex-rankers in a bad temper excepted — 
to unfasten a buckle in order to ascertain whether that recondite 
crevice at the root of the tongue was free from rust. The men of 
his troop rejoiced to see him cured of the practice of searching for 
scurf in the tails of horses shown out to be passed as clean, by a 
kick on the knee which he received from Tom Maguire’s vicious 
chestnut mare. With all this bustle of thoroughness, Jellypod 
had no intention of posing as a tartar ; he was simply full of 
exuberant zeal to do his duty to the extremest tittle. But he got 
himself all the same, heartily disliked and a good deal despised. 
You see he was in such a hurry to be critical that he had not always 
acquainted himself with the right names of things. The whole 
stable burst into a roar of involuntary laughter once, when he spoke 
of a crupper as a “ breeching and he “ mulled it ” severely on 
another occasion when he spoke of a horse’s “ left foot.” 

He was such a glutton for work that he was always ready to 
take “the belt” for another officer ; I have known him orderly 
officer for a week on end, and he performed the duties of the 
“ orderly ” function in the most thorough manner. He would 
“take the guard ” twice in the course of a night, and never omitted 
to make the round of the sentries with the serjeant. So full of zeal 
was he that when living for awhile in barracks during the 
absence of his wife at the seaside, he began the reprehensible 
practice of sneaking stealthily round the posts in order to detect any 
sentry who might be indulging in a few winks. He found it 
advisable, however, speedily to desist from this species of enter- 
prise, because of an unpleasant experience he met with. Approach- 
ing a sentry, he had bidden him “give up his orders.” Now the 
orders to sentries are that they are to give up their orders to nobody 
unless accompanied by the non-commissioned officer of the 
guard ; and the sentry refused. Jellypod, bent on testing the 
soldier’s knowledge of and fidelity to his orders, announced himself 
an officer and repeated his demand. The soldier recognized him, 
and saw his way to make reprisals on this man who pried by day 
into the tongues of buckles, and by night went on the prowl to trip 
up sentries. 

“ Here,” exclaimed the sentry, “ I don’t care who you are ; officer 
or no officer, you have no business cornin’ molestin’ me in my post, 
an’ tryin’ to make me commit myself by givin’ up my orders. 
Into the sentry-box with you, or I’ll fell you with my carbine. 
Jump lively, or I’ll brain you ! ” 


Jelly pod; alias The Muleteer, ii 

Jellypod was not a hero, and it was clear to him that the man 
was in earnest and his monkey up. Severely crestfallen, he |^ot 
into the sentry-box, and then begged of the sentry to summon the 
Serjeant of the guard. 

“ See you d — d first,” said the soldier, “you ain’t ‘ fire,’ so I’ve no 
call to give ‘ immediate alarm. ^ You’ll stop there and cool till 
the relief comes round, and that will be in about an hour and a 
half.” 

There was no help for it, Jellypod had to dree his weird. When 
the serjeant came with the relief, he wanted the sentry made a 
prisoner of for insubordination and threatening violence to his 
superior officer ; but the serjeant refused, saying he considered the 
man had acted within his duty. He put the occurrence into his 
report ; and next forenoon Jellypod was sent for to the orderly 
room, and had the opportunity of realizing with what emphasis and 
fertility of invective old Guardlex could administer a wigging. 
He never skirmished around any more among the night sentries, 
and for at least a week desisted from screwing his eyeglass into 
the crevices of big bits and turning buckles inside out. The chief 
was always down on him, but worse than ever after this episode. 
Two days after it, out at squadron drill, he told him he rode like a 
cross betw'een a tailor and a sack, and sent him back to riding- 
school till further orders. 

The truth was that the chief was most anxious to see the back 
of Jellypod, and the aspiration was shared in by every officer in 
the regiment. He was not detested ; it was recognized that 
there was nothing of the actual cad about him ; but the feeling 
was intense that he was the wrong man in the wrong place as an 
officer in the easy old confraternal Dung-punchers, who did not 
believe in new-fangled notions, and who, as regards most of their 
professional ways, had moved v^ery little since they charged in the 
Union Brigade at Waterloo. Colonel Guardlex was a just man, 
and under no temptation would he resort to tyranny, or allow his 
officers to indulge in hazing ; but he w^as not backward in ad- 
ministering strong hints to Jellypod that he was not in his 
proper sphere as a cornet in the Dung-punchers. As soon as that 
subaltern was dismissed trom riding-school, it became impera- 
tive that he should provide himself with a second charger — indeed 
he ought to have done so earlier. Beast after beast was sent him 
on approval, any of which he thought quite good enough, and it is 
true that any of them was good enough for the price which was 
Jellypod’s figure. But the right vests in the colonel of a cavalry 
regiment to pass or reject horses intended for officers’ chargers; and 
Guardlex ruthlessl}^ cast candidate after candidate for the position 
of Jellypod’s second charger. At last he was told he must get a 
second charger, and no more nonsense; Jellypod piteously urged 
that it was the colonel who was standing in the way of his 
possessing that requisite animal. 


12 


Camps and Quarters, 

While matters stood thus, the Dung-punchers got the route. 
I should have said they had been in Newbridge for a couple of 
years, and now they were ordered to Birmingham, Coventry and 
Weedon. Jellypod’s troop was in the detachment assigned to 
Weedon under the command of the major. Jellypod, whose 
first charger was lame, went by train into Dublin, where the de- 
tachment spent the night before embarkation. Next morning he 
appeared in complete marching order, on the back of a big under- 
bred young horse, as soft as butter, for it was just off the grass, 
and with quarters as round — well as Jellypod’s own. The beast 
fretted itself into a lather on the march down to the North wall, 
where, to the dismay of Jellypod, Colonel Guardlex was very 
much in evidence to see the detachment duly off. The chief no 
sooner caught sight of Jellypod’s mount, than he denounced it as a 
cross between a cow and a camel, and cast it on the spot, so 
Jellypod crossed St. George’s Channel a cavalry officer on the 
line of march without a horse to his name. 

He was the only subaltern with his troop, and it was thought 
by the major and his captain imperative that he should go on the 
road. The only resource was to dismount one of the men, and 
put Jellypod on the troop-horse. There was a good deal of malice 
in the selection of the quadruped. Throughout the regiment 
“ G. II ” had a malign reputation for unapproachable roughness. 
She was the sole survivor of the hard Crimean winter, and the 
tradition was that she had been there frozen solid, and had never 
again quite thawed. She was satirically known as “ the Bone- 
setter,^’ and was understood to have dislocated every articulation 
in the framework of one recruit, and jerked the teeth out of the 
head of another. This was the mount which on the Liverpool 
jetty was given to Jellypod, to carry him for nine long marches 
till Weedon should be reached. 

“ G. II ” was a pleasant horse at a walk, and not at all a bad- 
looking beast in the summer time when her coat was glossy. 
Jellypod clearly rather fancied himself as he paced up Compton 
Street under the eyes of the shop-girls. As soon as the town was 
cleared, the trumpet sounded “Trot! ’’and his self-complacency 
rapidly disappeared. Apart from her roughness, “G. 1 1 ” was a hot 
old jade, and stiffly plunged and bucked as she fought against the 
officer’s heavy hands tugging and jerking at the curb as he rolled 
and floundered all over the saddle, while the perspiration streamed 
from under his helmet. One need not dwell on the agonies of that 
march : suffice it to say that when Cornet Jellypod woodenly dis- 
mounted in front of theGrosvenor Hotel in the ancient city of Chester, 
the world has seldom contained a more saddle-sick man. As soon as 
saddles were removed, information came from the stable that the 
day’s work had given “ G. 1 1 ” a sore back, and that it was im- 
possible that she could be ridden during the rest of the march. 

Jellypod felt very like intimating that it was impossible that he 


13 


Jellypbd ; alias The Muleteer. 

could ride during the rest of the march. But he was of a resolute 
spirit, and first arnica and afterwards cunningly moistened pipe- 
clay judiciously applied had improved matters by next morning. 
A second trooper was dismounted, upon whose horse Jellypod 
performed the second day’s march to Market Drayton. The 
paces of this beast were suave and easy compared with those of 
the “ Bonesetter,” but Jellypod rolled about so in the saddle in the 
effort to favour his chafes, that when the day’s march was over 
mount No. 2 was reported to have a sore back. It was then that 
the captain, previously only grumpy, permitted himself the use of 
the strongest language in addressing the unfortunate Jellypod. 
This captain was known in the regiment by the pleasing appellation 
of “Hellfire Jack,” on account of the fervour of his objurgations 
when the spirit moved him. On this occasion the spirit moved 
him very much indeed, and rendered his remarks wholly unquot- 
able. Suffice it to say, that he swore Jellypod should have no 
further opportunity of bedevilling troop horses ; but should be com- 
pelled to tramp on foot the rest of the way to Weedon, leading the 
two beasts which he had used up in as many days. This was a 
hrutiim fulmen ; no doubt the captain would have been glad to 
carry out his threat ; but the major pointed out that it would not 
do. So Jellypod was permitted to finish the journey by train, and 
his abrasions were all but whole by the time the detachment rode up 
the slope by the military prison, and defiled through the fine old 
gateway of wrought iron that leads into the Weedon barrack-yard. 

A few months later the Dung-punchers quitted the midland 
stations, and were concentrated in the lines at the Queen’s Hotel 
end of Aldershot north camp. A very brief experience of the 
Long Valley sufficed for Jellypod. He had not nerve enough for 
a troop leader in a charge over its broken and dust-smothered 
surface. One day he pulled his horse back on to him in a half- 
hearted attempt to jump one of the little cuts which the rain 
storms wash out in the friable black dust, and as he lay prone in 
the V-shaped trough of it, a couple of squadrons rode over him. 
Next day he opened negotiations for an exchange to India, and 
presently he was gazetted to one of the ex-Company^s hussar 
regiments. 

Jellypod appeared to thrive in India. He had got his lieu- 
tenancy before his exchange, and some two or three years later an 
opportune snap of cholera made a captain of him. But his great 
chance came when Sir Robert Napier set himself to organize that 
Abyssinian expedition which brought him his fairly earned peer- 
age. Jellypod — I ought to say here that I believe the familiar old 
Dung-puncher name did not follow him to India — had the luck to 
get a special service billet. It did not promise much glory, since 
its function was the command of the mule transport train of one 
of the divisions, but he was thankful for minor mercies and 
accepted it with avidity. Now as a beast of burden the mule has 


H 


Camps and Quarters, 


its idiosyncrasies and peculiarities, which, it is averred with con- 
siderable show of authority, no white man has ever fully compre- 
hended. If this be indeed so, our friend was the exception that 
proves the rule. He seemed to have a natural affinity with mules, 
and could do anything with them he pleased. No Alabama 
nigger ever had a closer rapprochement with the mule than had 
this gallant officer ; and it was the universal recognition of this 
accomplishment that earned for him the sobriquet of “ the Mule- 
teer,” by which hereafter I shall denominate him. 

He was zeal itself. Staveley somewhat roughly sat on his 
project of giving evening lectures on the sandy beach of Annesley 
Bay to the Smitches, Rock Scorpions, Cypriotes, Syrians, 
Fellaheen and other miscellaneous scum of the Levant who were 
serving as mule-drivers, on the expediency of the construction of a 
common language to be used in addressing the mules in their 
charge. I have reason to believe that the story was a “ shave,” that 
he sent in a memorial to Sir Robert Napier, suggesting that a 
number of mules of both sexes should be left behind in the 
Abyssinian villages, with intent that a stock of transport animals 
should be thus propagated. But he certainly was a most zealous 
and active transport officer. It is reported of him that on one day 
he personally flogged upwards of three hundred mules up the 
steep slope on the landward side of Zula. Had there been any 
fighting in the Abyssinian expedition — it is really the case I 
believe that one man was killed — he of course would have been 
out of it in the rear among the baggage. But he was no greater 
distance off the final amusement than the south side of the 
Bashilo ; he was mentioned in despatches, as is the modern 
fashion in regard to every one above the rank of lance-corporal ; 
the Director of Transport strongly recommended him for “ extent 
and value of assistance,” and the Muleteer looked forward with a 
modest confidence to a brevet majority, and thought it not unlikely 
that he would get the C.B. as well. The Muleteer had the happy 
fortune to live, not in the bad old days, but in the good new days. 
In the bad old days, the only service that assured to a man a 
brevet — if he came out alive — was to lead a forlorn hope. Then, an 
officer might own a carcase as full of holes as a cullender, and 
never have the impertinence to dream of a brevet. The Napier 
brothers, for instance, got pretty well shot to pieces in the Penin- 
sular war ; Charles was a major at Vimiera in 1808. He was still 
a major after Fuentes d'Onoro in 1811, never having missed a 
battle, and having been wounded six times. George got his 
captaincy in 1804, he was all through the Peninsular fighting, from 
Corunna to Toulouse, in which battle, fought in 1814, he was but a 
substantive major, having in the interval lost an arm and been 
wounded otherwise repeatedly. Henry Havelock soldiered 
twenty-nine years before he obtained the rank of a field-officer. 
The officer of these brighter days lives under a regime the virtual 


15 


Jellypod; alias The Muleteer. 

head ot which was a full major-general in sixteen years after he 
got his first commission. Nowadays, every staff officer who has 
been within sound of a skirmish, the wind blowing his way, gets 
his brevet as a matter of course. There is a fortunate young 
gentleman in the service to-day (he is in “ the ring,” of course) who 
has three medals for as many campaigns, the C.B., the Khedive’s 
Octopus, and the Osmanlie, who has been the recipical of two steps 
in rank by brevet, and who has never seen a shot fired in anger. 

Well, the muleteer was earning his Abyssinian laurels a few 
years before “the ring” became the pride and ornament of the 
British army, else, supposing him to have been of the elect, he no 
doubt would have got the C.B. As it was, he got a brevet majority, 
and when the expedition returned to India, he said farewell to 
regimental duty and got a billet on the staff ; and such was his 
good fortune, that for some ten years he continued to hold staff 
appointments with perfect satisfaction to himself, and with no 
perceptible detriment to the interests of the service. Being on the 
Madras side, he gradually fell into the easy-going fashion of the 
“ benighted Presidency ;” no doubt his zeal had not departed from 
him, but it had fallen latent. His portliness had increased with 
years and ease, and it was only once in a blue moon that he was 
seen in the saddle. A second brevet had come his way in some 
inexplicable fashion, and he was now for some time past a lieutenant- 
colonel. But his substantive rank still remained that of captain, 
and as his original Indian regiment had gone home and he had 
exchanged into its successor, so as to keep on in his staff billet, he 
was regimentally a very junior captain. But this gave him no 
disquietude, since nothing was further from his intention than to 
revert to regimental duty. 

I don’t quite know how it happened, but in negotiating a second 
exchange so as to keep his staff berth, he somehow missed stays ; 
found himself all at once on half-pay, and no longer in staff 
employ. The story was that he was manoeuvred out of the 
brigade majorship, or whatever it was he held, by an intrigue at 
Presidency headquarters, where the post he had been occupying 
was wanted for somebody else. Anyhow, the poor Muleteer had 
no alternative but to return to England. He came back very 
disconsolately, and tried in vain for some staff employment. He 
would have left the service altogether, if he could have found 
anything to do worth his while in civilian life, but nothing offered. 
He thought himself too poor to scratch along on half-pay, and 
made interest for reinstatement to full pay and duty. His 
substantive rank being still that of captain merely, he could 
of course aspire to no higher regimental position ; and one fine 
day he was gazetted to a troop in the old familiar Dung-punchers. 
Of course he came in as junior captain. Certainly as a junior 
captain he was a good deal of an anachronism, for he was a 
grandfather he weighed sixteen stone, there was a deep tinge 


1 6 Camps and Qiia^ders. 

of grey now in the chestnut whiskers, and he was senior in the 
army to the commanding officer of the regiment. But now in the 
Dung-punchers, he met with a good deal of consideration. Most 
of the old hands who remembered him in his cockolorum days, 
were now out of the regiment. Old Guardlex was by this time a 
lieutenant-general ; the major had gone into brewing ; the adjutant 
was drilling a yeomanry corps ; and the quartermaster had retired 
on his plunder. 

The regular drill season was over, and the Dung-punchers had 
come from Brighton to Aldershot, exchanging with a regiment 
that had borne the heat and burden of the summer in flying 
columns and Long Valley field-days. So it seemed that the 
Muleteer had at all events a quiet winter in front of him, before the 
season should come round when he should have to encounter the 
chances of the Long Valley, the pitfalls of the Fox Hills, and the 
grips and fissures of the Devil’s Jumps. But it happened that 
early in October a continental cavalry officer of distinction visited 
England, and orders came down from Pall Mall for a field-day of 
the Aldershot cavalry brigade in honour of the stranger. The 
general commanding the brigade was away on leave, shooting 
grouse in Scotland. The three regiments paraded, and lo ! the 
junior captain of the Dung-punchers, senior as he was in army 
rank to any other officer on the ground, quitted his subsidiary 
position of squadron leader in the Dung-punchers, rode out to the 
front, and assumed command of the brigade. 

It must quite frankly be allowed that he made a deuce of a mess 
of it. The Duke addressed him in those bland phrases and mild 
tones which are so characteristic of the head of the British army 
when things do not go smoothly. The Muleteer, for his part, 
lost his temper as well as his head, and pitched vehemently into 
his own regiment, denouncing it for all sorts of faults and short- 
comings. The lieutenant-colonel commanding it bore his ex- 
pletives with a grim submissive silence, biding his time. At 
length, the Duke and the Muleteer both equally hoarse, the 
distinguished stranger fluent in encomia while an amused smile 
played over his features, the field-day came to an end. The 
Muleteer ceased from his temporary pride of place as acting 
brigadier- general, and reverted to his position as junior captain of 
the Dung-punchers ; and that honest old corps stolidly returned to 
barracks. No sooner had the men dismounted than “officers’ 
call ” was sounded. The officers, still with the grime of the Long 
Valley on their faces, crowded into the orderly-room, where they 
found the chief already seated in his chair, with that look in his 
face which it wore when he was not amiable. He directed the 
Muleteer to come to the front, and thus addressed him, — 

“ When in command of the brigade to-day, you used, sir, a con- 
siderable variety of forcible expressions, in the denunciation of the 
regiment which I have the honour to command. To some extent. 


Jellypud : alias The Muleteer. 


17 


I am prepared to admit the force of your strictures, although it 
might be the opinion of an impartial critic, that the fault did not 
wholly lie with the regiment. The squadron of which your troop, 
sir, was a part, was the chief sinner in slackness and blundering. 
You will, sir, till further orders, take that squadron out into the 
Long Valley for drill every morning, from nine to eleven. And, 
sir, I observed to-day that your seat on horseback was excessively 
bad, and that when your charger knocked about a bit, you were all 
over the place. You will, therefore, until further orders, go to 
riding-school every morning, from seven to eight, along with the 
junior class of recruits. That is all I wished to say. Good morn- 
ing, gentlemen.” 

The same afternoon the muleteer sent in his papers, and next 
morning he went away on leave, pending his retirement from the 
service. I believe he is now living in the Poictiers district, engaged 
in the occupation of breeding mules. 



J 


C 


Camps and Quarters. 


j5 


Well, the ending of that story was satisfactory any how, though 
it was such a fearfully long time coming. I have heard of fellows 
pretty nearly as bad as that, and the wonder is that the colonel did 
not make him send in his papers on the day after he joined. I 
remember a fellow dining at our mess and saying that his major 
gave lectures about things, and all the fellows had to attend. The 
general opinion was that the service was going to the dogs, and 
that it was not worth living if this sort of thing was to go on. 

The three men fell to discussing the story the cavalryman 
member of the trio had just told. It was thus that the Irish fenci- 
ble-looking fellow expressed himself : “ Of course that case you have 
been giving us was one of zeal where there was nothing behind it, 
The man was a fool, but even when zeal shows itself in good 
service it does not always pay. I know of a case in which a man 
did splendid service out of pure zeal, and instead of getting any 
honour or credit for it, he simply got into the black books of the 
authorities, and in the end it cost him his life. I heard of it from 
a man who was with Stewart’s division at Candahar, he knew all 
the facts of the case. I jotted it down afterwards in the form of a 
story, and I think I can tell it to you pretty nearly as I wrote it.” 

And then he began. 



E IRelict anb a 1ReUc. 


OFFICER’S WIDOW, having a house larger 

than she requires, is willing to let a sitting-room, bedroom, 
bath-room, and bedroom for man-servant, on reasonable terms to a 
gentleman dining out. Address, Euphemia, 6, Ethelberta Road, West 
Kensington, W. 


Looking over my favourite evening paper not long ago, I found 
this advertisement 

The name Euphemia struck a chord in my memory, but not 
very distinctly, and I threw myself back, pipe in mouth, into my 
rocking-chair, to muse on the matter. But nothing came of it. 
The next morning a letter arrived from an old friend, who had 
for some time left the service and settled down to bucolic vege- 
tation, saying that he was coming to town for the autumn, and 
asking if I could recommend him some good apartments for him- 
self and Sandy Martin, his old batman in the 190th, who had 
followed the colonel into civil life and the shires. Euphemia ! 
The very thing ; so, after a series of spasms of suffocation on the 
Metropolitan Railway, I found myself knocking at the door, and 
taking stock of a double-fronted villa, near The Cedars, which any- 
body can find for himself in the Hammersmith Road. Everything 
looked sciupulously clean and neat. The brass strips to which 
the bedroom blinds were attached gleamed brightly in the afternoon 
sun ; the knocker was as highly polished ; the steps rivalled in 
whiteness newly driven snow ; the Virginia creeper on one side was 
trained to an inch, and the variegated ivy growing slowly up the 
other side was carefully tended. The curtains in one window 
were of fine lace, with an Oriental silk fabric behind them, and in 
another window were of marone rep with a gold and green 
stripe. Between these latter curtains stood a large cage of gilt 
wire, filled with merry little birds, and in front of them was a 
tiled box, over which fuchsias nodded, and through these the 
warblers could peep out at the bits of grass which, with a well- 
rolled walk of grey gravel, lay in front of the abode. The door 
was opened by a trim little maid, wearing a coquettish cap with 
cherry ribbons, and dressed in black with a dainty apron of cambric, 
who made me a curtsey and gave me a smile such as ought to have 
done on the spot for any prentice lad who had a particle of taste. 
A moment later I found myself in a drawing room which ran 

C 2 



20 


Camps and Quarters. 

through the house from front to back, and admiring the good 
taste that prevailed from the lace curtains away to a conservatory 
in which a tiny fountain leapt among some gold and silver 
fishes, that were shaded by a wealth of lovely ferns and 
exotics. 

There is wealth here, as well as taste,” I was saying to myself, 
and was reaching out my hand towards a closed miniature case, like 
a triptych, standing on a mantelshelf, when the door opened, and 
in tripped one of the most charming figures imaginable. The lady 
was dressed in deepest black, but without that exaggeration of 
crape which too many young widows nowadays affect as a livery of 
woe. It was Euphemia, and instantly I knew her. The last time 
I had seen her was in the station at Multan, when she was bidding 
good-bye to the husband who was starting on his first campaign. 
She was then all in white, and smiles brightened her tears as though 
she saw afar off the hero of her young heart returning covered with 
glory and decorations, and clasping her to his breast. Now the face 
was a trifle rounder and more grave, but it had the same calm, in- 
effable sweetness, the same far-away look in the eyes, the same red 
and full lips. 

“ How do you do, Mrs. Scott ? ” I said. 

She visibly started, but answered nothing. I just touched her 
hand, and told her how I had called about the advertisement ; how 
the name Euphemia had reminded me of something all but for- 
gotten ; what was my mission, and who I was. Then she remem- 
bered me as a friend of her Frank, and beamed with delight at 
finding again in the wilderness of London one who had known him 
for a period all too brief. Within a week from that day my bucolic 
colonel was installed in the house with his Caledonian valet, and 
I became a frequent visitor. Colonel Jones, V.C., C.B., C.S.I., 
married Mrs. Scott within a year, and they have No. 6, Ethel- 
berta Road for their town house, while not very far from where 
the apple orchards are reflected in the Teme they spend a good 
part of the year in making themselves and their neighbours 
happy. 

It was while I was casting a fly in his company for some grayling 
that he told me the story of Frank Scott, of which faint echoes had 
reached me. 

“ Of course you know my wife’s name is not Euphemia. She 
only got it as a nick-name when she took a part in some charades 
at Multan, founded on the tales of Miss Edgeworth or Miss Austen. 
She looked the part so completely that — you remember the 
brotherly and sisterly way we had in Indian cantonments — she 
became Euphemia to everybody. Ah, yes, to be sure, you knew 
her then. But to me 

* Grace is a charming sound,’ 

and Euphemia is almost forgotten between us. Well, you know 


A Relict and a Relic, 


2 I 

how poor Scott started that November ten years ago in quest of 
glory and promotion. He was a probationer for the Bengal Staff 
Corps, and already distinguished as much for his assiduous attention 
to duty as for his delightful social qualities. He was ‘ Frank ’ to 
everybody, and they tell me he had so gained the hearts of the 
men, British and native, that he was never saluted without a 
smile of satisfaction, and he returned the salute as much by his 
cheery face as by the motion of his hand. Charley Beresford, I 
think, has the same sort of look. 

“ Well, he joined at Jacobabad, and was with the first troops to 
cross the Kachi desert. It was at Dadur that he got his fir^t job. 
You remember what the Mussulman folks say of Dadur, that ‘ the 
Almighty had no reason to make Hades when Dadur existed.’ 
He was made transport officer there for a few days, but he was 
soon moved up the Bolan. People nowadays speak lightly of the 
Bolan, forgetting the terrible place it was for troops in ^39 and 
*78 before Temple had made the carriage-road, and of course before 
the railway. Scott was the first to set himself to make a real road, 
and he got it into fair order at the rate of two or three miles a day. 
I think it is thirty times that the road crosses the stream between 
Dadur and the point at which the river gushes, full-born, out of the 
living limestone rock three or four miles from the summit. But 
Frank’s work told still better farther on, and it was he who clove 
a way through the ridge which the first camels had had to climb 
ere they commenced the descent to the dreadful plain of Dusht-i- 
Bedaulet or Dirwaza, where, just as camels died forty years before, 
their carcases strewed the dust, and lay in the ravines poisoning 
alike air and water. No ; history has no lessons for some people. 
But it had for Scott. Every night, when the column halted, 
he was on his Kashgar pony, with legs like a four-post bedstead 
— you know the sort of tireless, shaggy animal — directing the 
villagers, who were very glad of eight annas a day and a ration 
of biscuit, in burying the dead beasts, or dragging them far to 
leeward of the track. 

“ If every part of the column had had a Scott, there would not 
have been so much work for the doctors and dispensers. But he 
had no time to do more than try to make matters a little better 
than he found them, for he had to push on to Quetta. There he 
was appointed to accompany the advance, and when the Khojak 
had been surmounted he was left at the top as one of those to 
whom fell the task of making a road down to Chaman and so to 
the plain, or old lake bottom, that, with hardly a break, leads on to 
Candahar. It was a lonely job. There was a company of Punjab 
infantry to guard the pass, and I think there was no gun left, for 
Biddulph, when he found he had no road for his guns, made a slide, 
you remember, and took them all down that way. Anyhow Scott, 
burning to get on and take part in the fight that everybody foresaw 
as a condition precedent to the occupation of Candahar, had to 


22 


Cavtps and Quarters. 

remain behind and help to get a road made. Disappointed though 
he was of sharing in the fight, which did not come off after all, 
Frank set himself with all his energy to road-making, and he got 
a capital winding track, wide enough for two waggons abreast, made 
in a very short time. 

“ But before it was completed, a convoy which had passed on was 
attacked by a band of villagers from a town lying a little bit off to 
the left, and it was resolved to utilise the next batch of troops that 
went up in giving these gentry a lesson, and showing them that 
theirs was a game at which two could play. Of course with a 
prospect of something to do, Scott’s blood was soon fired, and 
when the little punitive column set out he was not long in over- 
taking it. One who was on the Khojak when it returned found 
officers and men alike talking of the prowess that Scott showed ; 
how he rode*down, revolver in one hand and sword in the other, 
three stalwart tribesmen who came at him with tulwar and shield, 
while their fellows, with the long Afghan rifles, blazed away at the 
fearless officer whose Karki uniform was flying in ribbons, but 
who was himself unhurt, save for a very slight cut in one shoulder. 
Punjabi or doth, native officer or British officer, everybody was 
singing the praises of Frank Scott. When the column had burnt 
the village and seized all the weapons it could find, he went on 
with his road-making, as if he had not anything better to think 
about. 

Meanwhile there had arrived on the summit one of those officers 
who are to be found in every army — a man whose only title to 
respect is his seniority. He wanted to know how the road was 
going on. Where was the officer responsible for it ? Gone off on 
a raid, eh? By whose authority ? And so on, and so on. Well, 
you probably anticipate the sequel : in a day or two there came a 
most formidable set of papers to be filled up. There was no getting 
over the fact that poor Frank had absented himself ; the best thing 
was to avow it, and let it take its chance. This was done, but at 
headquarters a very serious view of the matter was held, and Scott 
w’as informed that he would not do for the Staff Corps, and that 
as soon as his services could be dispensed with he would return to 
his regiment, which was in England or South Africa, or somewhere 
where it had little chance, as it then seemed, of earning distinc- 
tion. He was returned to his duty as transport officer, and after a 
while he was left for “ general duty,” the most helpless position for 
a man with his heart in his profession.” 

“ Point de zHe ! ” I said. 

"Just so. He was put on convoy duty across the Kachi or the 
Pishin flats. His spirit was broken. For what might have won 
him the V.C. he was deposed and degraded, as it seemed to him. 
He ceased writing to his wife, save a few formal words not very 
frequently. 

" One day he turned up at Multan, and announced his intention of 


A Relict and a Relic. 


23 


going to his regiment at once. He had heard of troubles with the 
Boers or the Zulus, that he thought would help him to assuage his 
own. They left from Karrachi, and I think, while he sent Euphemia 
home, he managed to get transferred to an East Coast steamer at 
Aden, and so carried on to Natal.” 

“ Yes, and — ” 

“And he fell at Majuba Hill.” 

*****:}; 

“ We don’t know a good man when we have got him,” I said 
after an interval. 

“ Oh, I don’t say that. It depends on your general. But that’s 
how poor Frank went off the hooks.” 

“ But, then, how about the house at West Kensington ? ” 

“ Well, Euphemia had a little money, not much ; but all her 
friends told her it was a good and growing neighbourhood, where a 
house was a fortune, and she invested her all in an annuity and m 
the furniture and lease. She could just live by pinching herself, 
and she eked out for a while by the embroidery and the painting of 
which she is such a mistress. But she did not let her rooms. At 
last you saw the advertisement, which had been many times 
repeated in a place where nobody would have looked for such a 
thing, and the evening you found it was the most fortunate in my 
life.’^ 

“ Papa ! Papa ! where is that naughty papa ? Oh, you bad old 
thing,” cried a dainty maiden of nine or ten, as she threaded her 
way among the gnarled apple-trees, and ran into Jones’ arms ; 
“ where have you been all the morning ? I have looked for you 
everywhere. Why do you and this gentleman keep us waiting for 
lunch ? I beg your pardon, sir ; but papa has not introduced me. 
Pm Francey Scott, please ; and I hope you’ll not wonder that my 
papa’s name is Jones. I often do.’* 


■L. . 



24 


Camps and Quarters. 


That evening, while the fellows were smoking their last pipes 
before going off to roost, they mentioned that next day they were 
going over, if it were fine, to see some ruins of a castle or something 
about twelve miles away. I don’t know that I was ever more anxious 
for a fine morning than I was that night, not even when I had 
a field-day at Aldershot before me, and I could have cried, if I 
hadn’t given up crying a great many years, when my man told me 
when he came to get me up that it was pouring. After the bed 
had been carried out and I had got upon the sofa and had break- 
fast, in they came, and Lucy with them. She really is an awfully 
good sort of girl, for she had actually brought a bit of work, and 
had evidently made up her mind that the right thing was for her 
to sit there and bear it all, and be civil to them till lunch-time. 
Some people say women are not capable of great deeds, but I don’t 
believe myself that even Joan of Arc, who I believe was a plucky 
sort of girl, could have devoted herself and looked pleasant over 
it with a better grace than Lucy did. 

Now you would have thought that even three omnibus-drivers, if 
they had got a nice girl with them, would give up talking 
shop and try to find some subject that would be amusing to her. 
I think these fellows did for a time, for they got up all sorts of 
yarns about balls in every capital in Europe, and all sorts of other 
places, and I give you my word they even pretended to have had 
chats with kings and emperors and princes, the Prince of Wales 
among them, until I really wondered that even Lucy was able to 
keep her countenance. At last something was said about pretty 
faces, and that set the fat man off, and he began ; and you will 
hardly believe me, instead of telling us a tale about some pretty 
girl he had seen somewhere, which might have been worth listen- 
ing to, he went off with a cock-and-bull story about some nigger 
woman he had got a glimpse of. 


H passing face* 

Yes, as a rule the faces of people one meets leave but a very 
passing impression on the mind, unless one gets to know or speak 
with their owners. One reads, of course, of men who have fallen 
in love with a face seen but once ; but I fancy that sort of love 
would very soon die out if they did not happen to come across 
the face again within reasonable time. But I can recall one face 
ot which I caught but a passing glance some twenty years ago, 
which stamped itself in my memory, and which I can see now 
almost as plainly and vividly as I saw it then. 

A woman’s ? 

Y es. N o, not a pretty one ; pretty, perhaps, of its kind, but not of 
a kind that would cause an Englishman to think of it twice. It 
was a brown face, a light, clear bronze, with black wavy hair 
drawn tightly upon the head, and, I suppose, as usual, with little 
plaits behind. She wore a short leathern petticoat and a leathern 
skin wrapped somehow round her under the arms. She had a 
necklace of a few cowries round her neck, and one or two bracelets 
of beads on her wrists. 

She was an Abyssinian girl — a semi-savage no doubt ; a woman 
in aland where the women aremere beasts of burden, tilling theground 
and carrying the burdens, and toiling and slaving, while the men 
saunter about with their spears on their shoulders ; but a noble 
specimen of womanhood for all that — a woman capable of as 
grand an act of self-devotion as was ever performed by one of her 
white sisters. And I saw all that in a passing glance.? Yes, and 
that is why the face was burned into my memory, and while I 
think of it, I am filled with admiration and pity and respect. When 
I tell you how it came about, you will not laugh any more. You 
will agree with me, that that brown-skinned girl was as noble a 
creature as God ever made. 

We were on our way down from Magdala. Theodore was dead. 
He was a tyrant and a bloodthirsty one if you like, but for all that, 
he was a great man, and had he not come in collision with us, it 
is likely enough that he would have created a great African 
Empire, and that Abyssinia, instead of the Madhi, would now 
be master of the Soudan. He was as brave as a lion, and had a 


26 


Cani'bs and Qua^ders. 


genius for war, as was shown by the way in which he took advan- 
tage of our blunder in sending our baggage and ammunition 
slenderly guarded up a valley where they were out of touch with 
the main body of the force. 

It is true that he did not and could not reckon upon the 
terrible effect of the breech-loaders in the hands of the two com- 
panies of the 4th who formed the baggage-guard, or imagine that 
these would mow down like grass the flower of his troops whom 
he despatched to cut them off, while at the same time he sent a 
numerous body to occupy the attention of our main force. He 
had enlightened ideas, and was ready to learn what he could from 
the West, and did his best to get European workmen around him. 
Had it not been that the shameful blundering of our Foreign 
Office in allowing a letter he wrote to the Queen to remain for 
years unanswered, ruffled up his pride and self-respect, he 
might now be a great potentate, and Abyssinia the greatest power 
in Africa. 

However, he was dead, his mountain fortress a heap of ruins, 
and one army was on its way back. Not caring to follow its slow 
marches over ground already traversed, and eager enough to get 
home after eight months’ absence, I pushed on ahead with two or 
three others equally at liberty to follow their own devices. We 
had no thought of danger. Had the expedition terminated in failure, 
doubtless there would have been trouble on the way down ; but 
after crushing the power that had been deemed invincible, there was 
no fear of hostility on the part of the natives. The only people 
likely in the smallest degree to interfere with us were the Gallas, 
the tribesmen of the low-lying country between the me atains and 
the sea, and near relations of the gallant tribesmen who met us so 
boldly at El Teb and Tamanieb. 

At all times these were troublesome neighbours to theAbyssinians, 
making occasional raids upon the lofty plateau-lands, and carrying 
away cattle and women. We had seen them at work round the 
multitude we had disarmed and sent to their homes when we took 
Magdala*; we had come upon them plundering and ill-treating the 
helpless fugitives, and had had a sharp brush with them ; but as we 
went on, we heard no more ot their doings, and dismissed all 
thoughts of them from our minds. We passed Antalo, where we 
had a standing camp, half way down, and had made two 
more marches. Our rule was that one of us should always be on 
baggage-guard, while the other two could ride as they liked, start- 
ing, perhaps, an hour or two later, or riding on ahead and getting 
into camp long before the slow procession of the twelve baggage 
animals. We called it baggage-guard, but there was no idea of 
guarding it from danger ; but if the journey was to be performed 
in even moderate time, it was absolutely necessary that one of us 
should remain with the animals. 

The baggage was always shifting, for the road was constantly 


A Passing Face. 


27 


plunging down deep ravines, and in the descent the saddles would 
work forward on to the necks of the mules, or in climbing the hills, 
slip back over their tails. With one of us to get the native drivers at 
once to work to set things straight, the delay caused was not 
great, but if they were alone, each of these accidents was an excuse 
for a long halt. Half an hour would be wasted in angry ejacula- 
tion, and as much more spent over a soothing pipe, and the con- 
sequence was that the journey would take fully twice as long as it 
would if one of us was on guard. 

It chanced to be my turn. There were two or three pleasant 
fellows in the camp we had left, and my two companions said that 
they would breakfast there and overtake us by the time we reached 
the next camp in the afternoon. The country happened to be more 
level than usual, and we were getting along well, when some two 
hours after starting, we came upon a group of a dozen natives, 
principally women, with three or four laden donkeys. They were 
evidently in terror about something, and our drivers asked them 
what was the matter. 

They pointed ahead and said ‘‘Gallas.*’ I thought the idea 
absurd — for it was ten days since we had heard anything about 
these robbers — and prepared to go on, when the natives asked if 
they might accompany us. Of course I agreed. In another 
quarter of a mile we approached a village, and from this suddenly 
rushed out some forty or fifty men, who I saw at once, by the 
slight difference in their dress from that of the Abyssinians, were 
really Gallas. It was too late to run away, and we went forward, 
and in a couple of minutes they surrounded us. 

Well, that is no part of the story. I had, as you may imagine, a 
very bad quarter of an hour of it, surrounded by fellows with 
levelled guns and threatening spears, and without a soul near save 
two Portuguese servants who stood pluckily by me, and the 
cowering native drivers. Well, I got off; the fame of our capture 
of Magdala and defeat of Theodore had doubtless spread, and for 
the moment there was a wholesome dread of interfering with 
Englishmen. Unquestionably that, and that alonel saved 
my life, and at last I and the mules and baggage, and even the 
Abyssinians whom I claimed as under my protection, were 
allowed to pass, though they confiscated the donkeys and the 
burdens of the latter. 

It was almost a miracle, and even to this day I look back upon 
that encounter with astonishment. That sort of thing takes a lot 
out of you, and as I rode along in the rear of the baggage, I felt 
utterly washed out. 

Passing through the village, we saw several other bands of Gallas 
at work ; they were driving before them cattle and women, thrash- 
ing them with long sticks indiscriminately ; but though they passed 
close by us, they paid no attention to us whatever, considering, no 
doubt, that their chief, who had been with the party which had 


2S 


Camps and Quarters, 


stopped us, had in some way settled with us. A few hundred 
yards further, a solitary figure came along the road. 

It was the girl I spoke of. She was walking fast, and looking 
straight before her. My men, as she passed, said “ Gallas,” and 
pointed back. The natives with them raised their voices in 
warning, but she did not seem to hear, but came straight towards 
me. I reined in my horse and again said “ Gallas.” She gave a 
little wave of her hand as if to say she knew, and went past me. 
Her face was set, her lips pressed closely together, her dark eyes 
looking straight before her. There was an expression that seemed 
a mixture of horror and determination upon her face. It told its 
own story : someone she loved had been captured by the “Gallas.” 
It may have been a mother, it may have been a young sister ; but 
her mind was made up — she was going to share her fate, to submit 
to a life of slavery among the Gallas, in order to be with her and 
lighten her lot. 

I sat looking after her. Her step never faltered as she went along 
the track till, just as she got to the brow of a slight rise, four or five 
hundred yards back, I saw some white-robed figures waving their 
spears and shouting, run up and close round her. I was nervous 
and horribly shaken at the time, and I suppose that finished me. 
I know that as I turned my horse and went on again, I was cr3dng 
like a child. I have thought of her hundreds of times since, have 
wondered what her life was, whether her heroic sacrifice met with 
its reward in her being enabled to comfort the loved one for whose 
sake she had gone back, or whether one was carried off one way, and 
the other another, separated never to meet again. I have wondered 
whether I ought not to have stopped her and to have forcibly 
detained her for a few hours, so as to give her time to think it 
over calmly before she carried out her resolve. Anyhow, I 
have never forgotten the face, nor shall I forget it as long as my 
memory lasts. It stands out clear and distinct among all the 
countless faces my eyes have fallen upon. 



29 


When the fat man had finished, I was just going to say that I 
thought the woman had made a great fool of herself, for it wasn’t likely 
she would get with the same master as her mother or sister, or who- 
ever else it was who had been caught, and if she did so, as she would 
be a slave herself, it wasn’t much she could do for the old woman. 
But Lucy broke out into most ridiculous heroics about the woman, 
just as if there weren’t lots of white girls who sacrifice themselves. 
Why there was old Jim Hardcastle’s daughter ; an awfully extrava- 
gant old fellow, Jim. He got into an awful mess, with mortgages all 
over his property, and what did his daughter do but marry the 
man who lent the money, so as to set things right for her father. 

If that wasn’t a sacrifice I don’t know what was, for I know for 
certain she was fond of Harry Lucas, though as he was over head and 
heels in debt himself, of course that wouldn’t have been any good. 
Besides, I don’t see that this nigger woman was much worse off after 
all for going as a slave to these Galla fellows, for Bob Lipscombe, 
who went out as A.D.C. with Napier, told me that the women did 
all the hard work, and the men never put a finger to anything. It 
certainly wasn’t worth making all this fuss about; still, as Lucy 
seemed to think it was very fine, I said so too, though I couldn’t help 
thinking she was only fooling these men on, and wanting to see 
what lies they would invent next. 

“ It isn’t very often one hears about women doing very courageous 
things,” Lucy said, “and yet I don’t see why women should not be 
as brave as men.” 

“ I think they are every bit as brave,” one of the men said. 
“ They are silly about little things ; they are frightened at mice, they 
are mortally afraid of burglars, and I have known girls horribly 
frightened at a cow ; but I think it only is that they are more 
nervous than men, for when it comes to real danger, they are just as 
brave. In almost all cases of shipwreck, for instance, we hear that 
the women behave well, and I know that in Paris, when the bom- 
bardment was going on, they used to stand at their doors and 
knit and talk to each other across the street when the shells were 
coming down thickly. I remember a story in which a woman gave 
her life and died without a word or a cry, to save the man she 
loved, and, curiously enough, she too had a dark skin, though not 
so dark as that Abyssinian girl’s. I’ll tell it you, if you don’t 
mind.’* 



jfaftbful to tbe Beatb. 

You remember Chisholm, of the — Bengal Cavalry. We met 
him at Delhi with the Prince, a grand-looking fellow, and as fine a 
soldier as ever stepped. His regiment was one of the very best 
that passed the saluting-point at the big review. He is dead now, so 
there^s no harm in telling the story, as I heard it from a man who 
had been with him through the Mutiny, and who was one of the 
few who knew what changed him from one of the cheeriest young 
subalterns in his regiment into a silent and stern-looking soldier. 

At the time that the Mutiny broke out, he was serving in a regi- 
ment belonging to the Gwalior contingent. There had been, of 
course, a good deal of talk about the trouble with the greased 
cartridges, and the mysterious chupatties, and all sorts of whispers 
about disaffection ; but few people thought that anything very 
serious was likely to come out of it, and fellows went about their 
work and amusements as usual, drill, and pig-sticking, and shooting, 
tiffins and dinners. Scindia professed the greatest loyalty, and 
certainly no one ever suspected that his contingent would take part 
against us in any trouble that might come. 

Some four or five months before the trouble began, Chisholm, who 
was an enthusiastic sportsman, got news that a tiger had been 
doing a lot of damage at a village some eight or ten miles away. 
The weather was tremendously hot at the time, and a good many 
fellows were away on leave, and, of those with the regiment, some 
could not get away because of duty, others didn’t care about going, 
so Chisholm started by himself. When he got there, he found the 
information was correct. Not only had some cattle been killed, 
but two women had been carried off, one a few days after the 
other, and there was a regular scare prevailing in the village. 

There had been a cow killed that morning, and the natives took 
him to the spot. The cow had been only partially devoured, and 
it was pretty certain that the tiger would return that night to finish 
his meal. Although Chisholm was too real a sportsman to care 
about getting up into a tree and shooting a tiger in the dark, 
which is the favourite way of a good many men who are fond of 
bragging about the number of tigers they have killed, he determined 
to do so this time because, owing to the shortness of hands for duty, 
he had to be back again next morning for work, and as the tiger 



31 


Faithful to the Death. 

had taken to woman-killing, it was important that it should be 
polished off as soon as possible. The nearest tree was about fifty 
yards off, too far a good deal for a certain shot in the dark ; but 
Chisholm would not have the carcass dragged closer, for he was 
afraid the tiger would scent that it had been touched, and refuse to 
come out of the bushes, of which there was a large clump close by, 
so he wouldn’t let anybody go near the cow. 

There was a clear view of it from the tree, and he hung a white 
cloth on a bush behind it, so that he could be sure of its exact 
position. When night came on, he took up his post in the tree, with 
his rifle and a flask of brandy and water, and he had with him a 
native servant, a man who had been about him for three or four years, 
and who had been a Shikari in a native village, and could be 
always relied upon at a pinch to be close to his master’s elbow with 
his second rifle. A fellow of that sort is worth his weight in gold, 
for nine out of ten of these fellows make a point of bolting as soon 
as there is any real danger, and, when the second rifle is wanted, 
they are nowhere to be seen. So Chisholm prized his boy, and 
the fellow would go through fire and water for him. They sat 
there talking in low tones for two or three hours, then they 
heard a roar in the distance, and knew that the tiger was on his 
feet, and that they might soon expect him. The spot of white 
could be plainly seen, but they could only just make out the 
position of the carcass. Not a word was said for half an hour, and 
then Ramal touched his master’s elbow, and whispered, — 

“ I think he there now. Sahib.” Chisholm could see nothing. 
There was a dark blurr where the carcass lay, but he could not 
distinguish its outline. Directly afterwards, however, he was con- 
scious of sounds from that direction. 

“He is there. Sahib, he is eating,” Ramal whispered. 

“ I think I can make him out just under the white cloth. Well, 
it’s a question of chance, Ramal. I wish now I had got into a bush 
close at hand, instead of getting up here. I did not think it was 
going to be so dark as it is. However, it’s no use waiting, there 
will be no moon, and he will probably be off before the first streak 
of daylight ; I will risk it anyhow.” 

He took a steady aim at the dark mass in a line with the white 
spot, and fired. He heard the thud of the ball followed almost 
instantly by a sharp, snarling roar, then there was a sound of break- 
ing brushwood, and then all was quiet. 

“ I think you have hit him hard. Sahib, by his roar.” 

“ Weil, there is no use our waiting here any longer, Ramal ; he 
has made off, and will go straight home, I expect. We may as 
well go back to the village and get three or four hours’ sleep. At 
daybreak we will take up his tracks and see where he has gone to. 
If he is hit hard, he may not go far, and we may pick him up the 
first thing ; if he has gone off, I must ride over to be in time for 
parade, and come out again next day to follow him up.” 


32 


Camps and Quarters, 

As soon as it was daybreak, the villagers turned out in force, the 
tiger was tracked to some distance, spots of blood being found 
here and there. Ramal declared that the tiger had been hard hit. 
Its course evidently led to a narrow valley running up into the hills, 
and this the villagers asserted was his usual lurking-place. 

“ There is no searching that this morning,” Chisholm said, “ j 
have no time to spare now, I shall have to ride fast to be in time 
to dress for parade.^’ 

It was accordingly arranged that some of the villagers should 
keep watch in the trees near the entrance to the valley that night, 
and that the young officer should return the first thing in the 
morning. Leaving Ramal behind him, to make the necessaryarrange- 
ments, Chisholm at once rode off. The report the next morning 
was a satisfactory one : the tiger was certainly in the ravine, for he 
had been heard roaring several times during the night. Chis- 
holm took his place with Ramal at tne entrance to the valley. A 
number of the villagers scattered themselves along its upper edges 
with gongs, pots and pans, and other noisy instruments, so as 
to deter the tiger from attempting to ascend the slopes. Twenty 
men with the dogs of the village went up to the head of the valley 
to drive it down. 

As soon as all was ready, the beat began, and a confused noise of 
jangling bells, deep-toned gongs, the barking of dogs, and an 
occasional shout, told those at the mouth of the valley what was 
going on. Nearer and nearer it came, and Chisholm expected 
every moment to see the tiger break through the brushwood in 
front of him. At last the bushes parted, and the first of the beaters 
appeared — the attempt had been a failure. The tiger had lain 
close, either in some hidden cave or in a clump of bushes, or had 
managed to pass unobserved through the line. 

“ We must try again,’^ the young officer said, “ this time we 
will send the beaters round again to the end of the valley, and you 
and I, Ramal, with one or two men and the dogs, will work up.” 
Ramal had perfect confidence in his master, and at once agreed to 
follow him. None of the natives, however, could be persuaded to 
accompany him, and therefore taking with them five or six of the 
dogs, they set out alone. For some time nothing could be seen of 
the trail ; Chisholm saw at once that the dogs had been of little use 
on their way down, and instead of hunting among the bushes, they 
kept close to his heels, evidently in fear. 

“ They must smell him strong, Ramal.” 

“ Yes, Sahib, if he has been stopping in this place sometime, no 
doubt they can scent him anywhere. We must look sharp, we 
know he is wounded, and he may be on us any minute.” 

With his finger on his trigger, Chisholm made his way graduall}' 
uo the valley, stopping to search every thick clump of bushes and the 
piles of fallen rock. Suddenly, without the slightest warning, there 
was a rustle among the leaves, a vision of a great yellow body in 


Faithful to the Death. 33 

the air, and before he could turn to fire, he was struck to the 
ground with tremendous force, his rifle going off as it flew from his 
hand far among the bushes. Then he heard a sharp cry, and in a 
moment sprang to his feet. Close to him was Ramal lying on the 
ground with the tiger over him. The impetus of the spring had 
been so quick, that the animal had brushed the young officer’s side, 
and alighting at the feet of Ramal, had at once pulled the man 
down. 

Without a moment’s hesitation Chisholm drew the kookerie that 
he carried as a hunting-knife, and struck the tiger a tremendous blow 
on the neck. With a roar it left its victim, and turned upon its 
assailant. Chisholm again struck at it, but in an instant he was 
upon his back with the tiger crunching his shoulder, and tearing 
his chest with its claws. Suddenly there was the report of a rifle ; 
Chisholm felt the tiger’s grip relax, and it rolled over beside him, 
just as consciousness left him. When he recovered, he sat up with 
a great effort and looked round. The tiger was dead, Ramal lay 
two or three yards away with an arm broken, and the blood stream- 
ing from some terrible gashes on his body. The rifle lay across 
him ; he was insensible. 

Wounded as he was, he had evidently rallied his strength 
sufficiently to throw forward the rifle he carried, and to fire the shot 
that saved his master’s life. Chisholm called to the villagers 
that the tiger was dead, and then sank back again upon the ground. 
It was some time before the natives summoned up courage to come 
down, but at last three or four of the boldest of them ventured, and 
their shouts that the tiger was really dead brought down the rest 
of their companions. There was a great talk over the insensible 
bodies, then two litters of boughs were made, and Ramal and his 
master placed upon them ; Chisholm opened his eyes as he was 
being lifted upon it. 

“ Where are you going to take me,” he asked. 

“ Not far. Sahib, there is a place not far away, where you will be 
well cared for.” 

After being carried a distance that seemed to him, lying there 
with his eyes closed, almost interminable, there was a stop ; then 
a good deal of talking ; he was carried a little further, and then 
the litter was laid down. He opened his eyes and looked round. 
He was in a spacious apartment, evidently a part of a house of some 
importance. An elderly man was bending over him. 

“ You are with friends. Sahib, this house and all that is in it are 
at your disposal ; I have sent off a mounted messenger to fetch the 
doctor of your regiment.” Chisholm was again lifted, carried 
into a smaller chamber, and laid on a couch ; his clothes, hunting 
coat and shirt, were cut off him, and his wounds bathed with warm 
water and a cooling drink given to him, then poultices of bruised 
leaves were placed on his wounds. 

“ How is my boy ? ” he asked presently. 


D 


34 Camps and Quarters, 

“He is badly hurt, Sahib, worse than you are, but he may 
recover.” 

In a little over two hours, the regimental surgeon and two of his 
fellow-officers stood by his bedside. 

“You are pretty badly hurt, Chisholm,” the former said, after 
examining his wounds, “ but I think you will pull round. He has 
scored your shoulder badly, and you seem generally smashed up 
there, but if you will lie quiet and be patient, I expect we shall get 
you all right again in time ; these are nasty-looking gashes down 
your chest, but there’s nothing to fear from them. You seem to 
have fallen into good hands here. The Rajah has been assuring 
me that they will take every care of you.’^ 

“ How is Ramal, Doctor.?” 

“ Well I have scarcely looked at him yet ; he looks pretty badly 
hurt, but one can never tell with these natives. Sometimes they pull 
through injuries that would kill an Englishman, more often they 
seem to lose heart altogether, and die of wounds that appear almost 
trifling; however, you had best not worry yourself about him, or 
anything else at present, but keep absolutely quiet ; the great thing 
we have got to fight against is fever. There isn’t much that I can 
do for you except to bandage your arm in its proper position. As to 
dressings, I don’t think 1 can do better than leave you in these 
people’s hands. I have found over and over again that these leaf 
poultices of theirs are better and more cooling than anything 
we know of. Now we will leave you to yourself ; I shall be over 
again to-morrow to look at you, and I will ask the Rajah to send 
over at once if he should see fever coming on.” 

With exhortations to keep up his spirits, and prophecies that he 
would be soon on duty again, the officers said good-bye, and after 
the surgeon had seen to Ramal’s wounds, and had another talk 
with the Rajah, they rode off 

“ Very decent fellow, the Rajah,” one of them said. “ I don’t 
know that I have ever seen him before. I think I should have 
noticed him if I had, for he is a good deal fairer than most of 
them.” 

“ I have heard of him,” the surgeon said, “ he has white blood in 
his veins, his father was one of the French adventurers, of which 
there were at one time so many in India. He entered the 
service of Scindia, and commanded the artillery in the battle of 
Maharajpore. He married a native woman and adopted native 
habits. I believe the reason we have never seen the present man 
is, that ever since that time, his family have kept up the French 
traditions and regard us with hatred, so that he never comes to 
Scindia’s court on any occasion when any of our officers will be 
present. Of course, by this time the trace of French manners is 
very small, but I imagine, from what I heard, that they pride them- 
selves upon it, regard us as usurpers, and hate us because India is 
British instead of being French. However, whatever their feelings 


35 


Faithful to the Death. 

may be, the Rajah is evidently disposed to do all he can for 
Chisholm individually, who is far more likely to do well there than 
he would be in his own quarters, with the trumpet-calls sounding 
all day, and the music, and you fellows going in to disturb him every 
half-hour. Except that it will give me a longish ride every day, I 
am heartily glad they took him and Ramal there instead of 
carrying them back to the cantonment.” 

It was a month before Chisholm was able to be moved to the 
cantonment. During that time, the Rajah’s wife and daughter had 
nursed him as if he had been one of their own family. Although 
there was nothing in the house, in its appointments, or in the dress 
of its inmates that differed in any respect from those of other 
Mahratta chiefs, the strict seclusion of the women was not practised. 
Outside the house the ladies of the family were as thickly veiled as 
other females of the same rank, but, within, they moved freely about 
unveiled. Father and daughter could both speak a little French, 
and books in that language in considerable numbers were to be 
found in the house. 

It was therefore only to be expected that, by the time he was 
well enough to be moved, the lieutenant was deeply in love with 
his young nurse. The girl was no darker in complexion than 
a Spaniard, and possessed the soft grace of the Indian woman, 
tinged with a sparkle and vivacity that came to her from her French 
ancestor. She had never before spoken to a European, and yet 
her books had taught her a great deal about European life. She 
had been taught to hate the English, who had snatched India from 
France, and had been the constant rival and foe of that country. 
She had often peeped out from between the curtains of her palan- 
quin, when she went with her mother to make calls upon the ladies 
of Scindia’s Zenana, at the English troops on the Maidan, and had 
sighed, at the thought of the freedom with which, had she been but 
a French woman, she could have stopped and looked more closely 
at the conquering soldiers. She had never been near enough to 
see their faces, and had pictured them as fierce and arrogant men, 
and as hateful in their ways as terrible in arms. 

The first sight of the wounded young Englishman had sur- 
prised her. Pale and lifeless as he was, he could be neither fierce 
nor arrogant ; nor was there anything hateful about that face, with 
its brown wavy hair. It was not wonderful, therefore, that love on 
her part was as rapid as on his, and that although her mother never 
left them alone together, they perfectly understood each other. It 
is so easy to press a hand that gives you a cup ; so easy, even in 
the bestowal of a flower, to indicate that something more is given. 
Lucille, for the Frenchman had given to his daughter the name 
of his mother, knew, even while giving her whole heart to the 
young soldier, that for them the course of true love was not to 
run smooth. She knew her father’s prejudices, and could see 
that while paying a visit of courtesy every day to the invalid there 

D 2 


3 ^ 


Camps and Quarters, 

was a certain restraint in his manner ; she felt that if hospitable to 
the guest, he was not friendly to the Briton. 

The young officer had no such fears ; he had been puzzled at 
first at finding the girl so different from his preconceived notions of 
Indian women ; but this was accounted for when she told him of 
the Frenchman who had been her grandfather, and how the family 
had steadily clung to the lessons he taught his children ; but of the 
Rajah’s animosity to his race, he knew nothing. He felt that were 
she dressed in European clothes, he could present her anywhere ; 
already her manners were half European, and with her quickness 
and tact, she would soon adapt herself to her changed position, 
while her beauty and grace would make her everywhere admired. 
As to her religion, she would, of course, in a short time embrace his 
own. 

He hardly looked for opposition on the part of the Rajah. 
Lucille had two brothers, both officers in Scindia’s native body- 
guard. Girls are thought little of in India, and the Rajah 
would hardly object to give his daughter to an English officer, 
especially as the officer was heir to a handsome property at 
home. After his return to the camp, it was a month before 
Chisholm was strong enough to mount a horse. His first ride 
was to the Rajah’s. To his disappointment the Rajah received 
him ceremoniously, and the ladies did not appear. None of 
the usual honours were omitted, and yet Chisholm felt that the 
greeting was a cold one, and that the Rajah wished to intimate that 
although he had been glad to show him every hospitality while 
wounded, he had no idea of admitting him to any close intimacy, 
upon the strength of his late stay there. 

The next day he wrote a letter to the Rajah, formally asking for 
Lucille’s hand. He stated that his income was large enough to 
enable him to give her every luxury she had been accustomed to. 
To his surprise and anger he received a cold and peremptory re- 
fusal. The Rajah said that in his opinion the differences of race and 
religion offered an insurmountable obstacle, in addition to which 
he himself, descended as he was from a Frenchman, entertained 
the profoundest objection to any of his family allying themselves 
in any sort of way with the British. It was not in Chisholm’s nature 
to put up with a repulse where his heart was concerned. Money will 
do even more in India than anywhere else, and tiny notes in French 
passed backwards and forwards between the Rajah’s Palace and 
the Cavalry Cantonments. Vows of eternal fidelity were plighted, 
and although at first Lucille declared that she would never marry 
without her father’s approval, she gradually yielded to her lover’s 
appeals, and came to consent that when the regiment moved from 
Gwalior, which would probably be in a few months’ time, she 
would fly with him. 

He had promised to arrange that she should, on reaching the 
cantonment, be placed in charge of one of the officers’ wives, who 


Faithful to the Death, 


37 


would drive with her in the dress of an ayah, straight on to Agra, 
where the marriage would be solemnized. The letters now were 
exchanged at longer intervals, for, seeing that all was arranged, they 
agreed that it would be better to run as little risk as possible. 
Then came the first muttering of disaffection ; but even when the 
news came of the first rising at Barrackpore, the officers of the 
cavalry had no thought of danger for themselves, whatever happened 
elsewhere. They had no fear of disturbances in Gwalior, for 
Scindia had hastened to proclaim his strong adherence to the 
English Raj, and even were the troops disposed to revolt, which 
no one believed, they would not venture to do so when Scindia 
could call upon his people to take up arms against them. One 
day, however, Chisholm received a hurried note from Lucille. 

You must beware, Malcolm ; my brothers have been here, and 
they and my father have been talking much together. I know but 
little of what was said, but I am sure it means evil. You know 
my father’s sentiments towards the English ; he has been quietly 
collecting arms for some time, and men have been coming in from 
the country around, and drilling has been going on under men who 
were serjeants in the contingent. From what I gathered, my 
brothers say that the contingent will go with their countrymen 
and then Scindia will be forced either to place himself at their head 
or will be dethroned. I only heard a few words, but this is what 
I understood from them. I will write again as soon as I learn 
anything for certain.” 

Chisholm took the note across to the Colonel, whom he had 
already acquainted with his determination to marry Lucille, a 
determination that the Colonel had done his best to combat, on the 
ground that these mixed marriages were always a mistake ; but 
then, as Chisholm told him, Lucille was not like an ordinary Indian 
girl, but in character as in name was already half European. 

“ I am obliged to you for bringing the note to me,^^ the Colonel 
said, “ and, of course, I will keep my eyes open, and take every 
precaution ; but I cannot but think that the young lady must have 
misunderstood what she heard. Scindia assures us that the Con- 
tingent is absolutely to be relied upon, and that, if necessary, he 
will himself lead it in the field against the mutineers. The 
conduct of the men is so far excellent, and I really cannot think 
there is any cause for alarm. You see she said she only caught 
a few Words, and I think that she must have altogether mis- 
understood their signification. Still, of course, I will take every 
precaution.” 

Weeks went on, the flames spread far and wide through India. 
News of mutiny and massacre arrived daily, and still all was quiet 
in Gwalior, rnd even Malcolm Chisholm came to think that 
Lucille must have been mistaken. 

Then the explosion suddenly came. Or his return from mess to 
his bungalow, Chisholm’s servant told him that there was a woman 


38 Camps and Quarters. 

waiting to see him, she had a petition to present. Supposing that 
she had come to beg, Chisholm briefly told the dark figure crouched 
in the verandah to come inside. He then turned up the lamp burn- 
ing on the table. To his surprise the woman carefully closed the 
shutters behind her, and then throwing back the cloth that covered 
her face, Lucille stood before him. 

“Good Heavens,” he exclaimed in amazement, “is it you 
darling? ” and for the first time he threw his arms round her and, 
held her in his embrace. “ What brings you here in this dis- 
guise ? ” 

“ Oh, I am afraid I am too late,” she exclaimed, drawing back 
from him.” I have been waiting nearly two hours, and now it is just 
the time. I came over to warn you, Malcolm. The troops are going 
to rise this evening. There,” she cried, with a sudden start, as the 
boom of a heavy gun on the rock fortress was heard, “ that is the 
signal — listen.” 

There was no need to listen. In a moment there was a 
sudden uproar. Shouts were heard in all directions, and almost 
instantly musket-shots rang out. Chisholm rushed on to the 
verandah ; he saw a mass of dark figures round the mess-house, 
while others were rushing across the barrack-yard. A moment 
later, the Colonel ran out bareheaded, a dozen rifles cracked, and 
he tottered and fell. 

“ Save yourself, Malcolm,” the girl said. “ Another moment and 
you will be too late.” He ran back, and seized his sword and 
revolver. 

“ You will come with me, Lucille, I cannot leave you here.” 

“ I have nowhere else to go,” she said, placing her hand in his. 
They ran together from the back of the house, through the shrub- 
bery, and away behind the compound. 

“ If I had but my horse,” Chisholm muttered ; but it was useless 
thinking of it, the stables lay the other side of the mess-house. 
Fortunately there were bushes and broken ground coming close 
up to the pailings, and although they heard the shouts of the 
mutineers in the bungalow before they had got fifty yards away, 
they felt they were safe for a time. 

“You are sure the Contingent have risen too?” he asked, as, 
after running for some distance, they broke into a walk. 

“ Quite sure,” she said, “ I heard it all talked over this morning. 
I think they suspected that I had been writing to you, they 
watched me so closely all day, and it was not until just as it got 
dark that I managed to slip out of the house. Fortunately, as I 
went, I met my old nurse, and she gave me her things, and took 
mine away to hide. They missed me very soon, for I heard shouts, 
and felt sure they were searching for me, and, after I had left the 
road and made across the fields, I heard horses gallopping along 
towards the town. When I found that you were not in, I did not 
know what to do. It was terrible sitting there watching the 


Faithful to the Death, 39 

time go by, and knowing that the signal-gun might fire before you 
came.” 

They walked on for hours, and Lucille who had never taken any 
exercise on foot in all her life, became thoroughly exhausted. She 
would have still struggled on, but Chisholm, who had felt how 
heavily she hung on his arm, insisted on stopping. They entered 
a wood, and as soon as they did so, the girl sank on the ground. 
Chisholm took off his mess jacket, collected some leaves, and 
stuffed them inside it, so as to make a pillow, and then put it under 
her head. But she was almost unconscious of what he did, and 
the young officer had soon the satisfaction of knowing that she 
was asleep. The loss of the jacket was no inconvenience to him, 
for the night was hot and sultry. He went a few steps away, 
and, leaning against a tree at the edge of the wood, watched until 
morning. 

He saw that their position was almost desperate ; the few who had 
escaped would be closely searched for, and until beyond the limits 
of Scindia’s dominions, there was no hope of shelter or assistance. 
It was probable that some other officers of the Contingent might 
have also escaped, and the cavalry would be sure to be scouring 
the country for them. But mingled with the thought of the 
dangers before them, was a sens , of joy and exultation that Lucille 
had risked all to save him, that if he reached shelter, she would be 
by his side. As soon as it was daylight, he saw small parties of 
cavalry moving across the country : he went back and touched the 
sleeping girl. 

Lucille,” he said, you must get up, dear, we must get further 
into the wood, and hide in some thick clump of underwood ; they 
are scouring the country for fugitives.” 

She had woke with a start when he had spoken to her, and he 
now helped her up. 

“ I have slept,” she said, “ oh, and you gave me your coat 
for a pillow. It was too bad, I would not have had it had I known 
it.” 

“I was quite hot enough without it. Now, dear, we must be 
going at once.” 

“ Oh, I am so stiff,” she said, as she made a step forward, “ but 
I shall soon get over it.” 

Chisholm threw his arm round her and helped her along, until 
they reached a thick undergrowth, ii.to the centre of which, with 
some difficulty, he made his way with her. 

“ Now you had better lie down again, and get a few more 
hours' sleep.” 

“ Not now,” she said “I am thoroughly awake, and the stiffness 
is gradually going off. Now, Malcolm, have you thought of what 
you are going to do ? ” 

“ I have been thinking about it all night, but there is nothing to 
do but to push on — walking at night, and resting in the daytime. 


40 


Camps and Quarters, 

Two nights ought to take us well beyond the frontier, and then we 
may hope to get aid and shelter in some of the villages. The 
difficulty is about food ; you can never go another forty-eight hours 
and travel two nights without food.” 

“ I can go into a village and buy food,” she said, while you 
remain in shelter.” 

“ I can never allow that,” he said, “ you might come upon a 
party of the mutineers anywhere.” 

“ That would be very bad if I were with you,” she said, “ but 
they will not know me from any other native woman. I do not 
think there is any danger ; besides, one need only do it once, for I 
can buy enough food to last us till we get among friends.” 

At this moment they heard voices, and a party of troopers rode 
through the wood within twenty yards of the spot where they were 
lying concealed, but, fortunately, did not search the bushes. It was 
not until the afternoon that Malcolm consented to Lucille's going 
out alone ; he would not have done so then had he not seen that 
she was suffering much from want of water, and that it was 
absolutely necessary she should obtain food before she could 
continue the journey. He would gladly have undertaken the task, 
however great the danger, but she declared that if he was so head- 
strong as to go to his death, she would go with him, and he 
therefore at last consented to her starting alone. 

Had he known that his servants had informed the mutineers, 
when they rushed into the bungalow, that a native woman had 
been waiting for him there, and that they had escaped together, he 
would not have let her stir out until after dark, however great had 
been her sufferings ; but he did not think of this, and believed that 
she would be able to come and go unquestioned. Two hours later 
he beard loud talking at no great distance ; he could not distinguish 
the words, but the tones seemed threatening. He grasped his pistol, 
and prepared to rush out and die fighting if he heard a woman’s 
voice ; but no scream or cry came to his ears ; the voices were those 
of men only, presently they ceased. Then he heard men searching 
the wood ; two or three times they came within a few paces of him, 
but while the talking was going on, he had climbed a tree that rose 
in the centre of the undergrowth in hopes of seeing what was going 
on, and as soon as he saw figures approaching, had taken refuge 
among the topmost boughs. 

For an hour a close search was kept up through the wood, then 
the mutineers drew off, and all was quiet. It was now growing 
dusk. He descended the tree and waited for another quarter of an 
hour, and then, unable to bear the suspense longer, made his way 
to the edge of the wood in the direction Lucille had taken. He 
could see no single figure across the stretch of country. He 
returned to the hiding-place in case she might have entered the 
wood at some other spot, but she was not there ; he then moved 
towards the spot where he had heard the voices raised in anger. 


Faithful to the Death, 


41 


As he approached it, he saw something on the ground. With a 
cry he rushed forward, Lucille lay dead before him, literally 
hacked to pieces. 

There were some troopers in the village she had entered. She 
made her purchases and started on her return, but after she left, the 
villager of whom she had bought provisions, remarked to one 
of his neighbours that she was a stranger, and wondered whence 
she had come. A trooper overheard him, and told his com- 
rades. They guessed at once that she was either the woman 
they had heard of, or a native servant of one of the white women 
who had escaped, and at once mounted and pursued. They over- 
took her just as she arrived at the wood, told her that they knew 
that she was with some of the Feringhees, and demanded to be led 
to their place of concealment ; this she absolutely refused to do. 
They threatened her with death, but she was firm, then they carried 
out their threat, and killed her. Not a cry escaped her lips, though 
she received several wounds before a merciful stroke struck her 
down. She knew that her lover was within hearing, and that a 
cry would bring him out to his death, and so she stood firm and 
unshrinking, facing her murderers with almost a smile of triumph 
that she had saved her lover. 

Chisholm took in the story at a glance, although it was not until 
many months afterwards that we heard the details from the villagers 
before whom the mutineers had boasted of the deed, while cursing 
the obstinacy their victim had shown, and marvelling at the silence 
with which she had met her fate. Chisholm dug a grave with his 
sword, and laid Lucille to rest, and then started on his way. The 
journey that would have taken them together two nights, he 
accomplished before morning, and staggered white, exhausted, and 
blood-stained into the hut of a peasant ; there for days he lay un- 
conscious with fever, nursed by the peasant and his wife. 

When he recovered, he made his way down to Cawnpore, and 
joined Havelock’s force there ; he fought desperately through the 
mutiny as one utterly reckless of life, and when the troops met the 
Gwalior Contingent, Lucille was deeply and bloodily avenged. 
From that time he was never himself again ; he was a fine soldier, 
no better in the service ; but no one ever saw him smile, his heart 
was in that lonely wood in Gwalior. He never went back to 
England, never took a day’s leave, and seemed to live but for 
his duty, and his comrades, to whcm he was ever ready to do 
a good action, would have gone through fire and water for their 
colonel. 



42 


Cumps and QuarUrSi 


“ That was grand,” Lucy said, clasping her hands ; “ I don’t think 
it so much that she should have died rather than betray her lover. 
Any woman worthy of the name would do that, but that she should 
have died without a cry seems to me wonderful. I don’t know 
why, but it seems almost apart of woman’s nature to scream when 
she is hurt. I don’t know why they should, for I do not think 
men shout out.” I am sorry to say, Miss Hambleton, that men 
generally adopt another method of relieving their feeling.” “ How 
is that?” Lucy asked innocently. “ By the copious use of strong 
language.” “ I am afraid that is true,” Lucy said. “ 1 hope. Jack, 
you didn’t swear when you were hurt the other day.” “ I have an 
uneasy recollection that I did, Lucy.” “ Then it was very wrong, 
sir, because there could be no relief in using what I have read 
American girls call ‘swear’ words.” “ I really differ from you there,” 
one of the men said ; “ the mere fact that it is the tendency of men of 
all nations to use strong language under the influence of sharp pain, 
would seem to show that it is a safety-valve provided by nature. 
Can you honestly say, Miss Hambleton, that you have never, 
when you have hurt yourself or something has gone very wrong, felt 
that it would be a relief to say something stronger than Good 
gracious ’ ? ” Lucy quite coloured up as if she had been actually 
caught using bad language, but she acknowledged honestly that 
there were times when she felt that it would be a satisfaction to 
use male privileges in this respect. Then the talk turned again to 
soldiers and to the actual love of fighting that animates them. 
“ Men will stand any fatigue and go through anything,” one of the 
fellows said, “ if there is a prospect of a fight, and nothing ex- 
asperates them more than for an enemy to fall back or open a 
parley just when they think that the fight is coming on. There is 
never any illness in a regiment before a fight, and however foot-sore 
or lever-stricken men will be, they will conceal their trouble rather 
than run the risk of being left behind. I can recall an instance in 
Egypt to the point. Here it is” 



Zeal In tbe IRanbs. 


Although the language in the British Army has not improved 
since the troops shocked Uncle Toby, in Flanders, I don’t think the 
spirit has suffered abatement. Listen to this little tale of the Nile 
Expedition. 

“’Ot? ’Ot? I believes yer, hit his ’ot,” said a cavalry private 
in a carriage of the line between Boulak and Assiout, in the early 
autumn of 1884; “why down hat Hel Teb hit was freezin’ com- 
pared to this. Hat least we ’adn’t cinders cornin’ hin hand 

catchin’ folks hin the heye — that makes me so ’ot, hi feels like ha 
Hotterman Turk. Hand has for the dust, atacha ! ” and then he 
sneezed. 

It was hot, it was dusty, it was grimy, that journey up the Nile. 
Men who at Cairo had clean faces, at Assiout were like coalheavers. 
The coal-dust lay thick upon cheeks and brows and hair and 
clothes. 

“Never mind/’ said one, “we’ll make the niggers look white 
presently. What ! is this Ashoot ? I thought it was only another 
halt. Well, God sends relief to the patient ! ” 

And then the 19th Hussars “detrained” — it is not a nice word, 
but it is official, and perhaps not worse than “entrained.” They 
were a splendid-looking lot of men, rather small, as light cavalry 
should be ; and they looked very “ fit,” in spite of their dusky hues. 
The regiment had a bad reputation, once, for slovenliness or absence 
of smartness ; but Percy Barrow had sent all that to the right- 
about, and Teb and Tarnai had shown the 19th had profited by his 
care. Before leaving Cairo, the order had been given that no man 
should go up the Nile who was not at least two-and-twenty, and 
who had not passed a rigid medical inspection, I think twice. 
When the train was emptied, and the serjeants were inspecting the 
carriages, to make sure no articles of the very limited kit had been 
forgotten, two fellows were found concealed under the seats. How 
far they had journeyed in that fashion is known only to themselves 
and their mates. But they were soon routed out and brought 
before the serjeant-major — I forget whether it was Chambers who 
was “ acting,” or Beale, who now holds the warrant, and is a soldier 
every inch of him, but, like every soldier, has a grievance. And his 
grievance is that if he had been promoted to the warrant at twenty 



44 


Camps and Quarters. 

years’ and one day’s service, he would have had a good conduct 
medal, but as he was promoted at nineteen-and-half years, he is 
not eligible for it. Did any one ever hear anything more absurd ? 

The first brought before the serjeant-major was a band-boy— a 
young Berkshire fellow in the band. He had not come within 
the conditions, and had been left behind in the depot at Abbasieh, 
when the regiment departed for the Nile Campaign. But the 
band played the squadron to Boulak station, and this boy had 
made himselt a stowaway. He had neither campaign clothing 
nor helmet, so he was easily “spotted.” Said the serjeant- 
major, — 

“ What are you doing here ? ” 

“ Please, sir, I could not help it ! ” 

“ Could not help what ? ” 

“ Couldn’t help coming, sir.” 

“Very well, you’ll have to go before the Colonel.^’ 

When he faced the awful presence of poor Barrow, who was 
as rigid as he was kind and plucky, he was asked by the 
Colonel, — 

“ What brings you here ? ” 

“ Please, Colonel, I couldn’t help it.” 

“What? How?” 

“ Please, sir, I was the only man in the regiment that hadn’t got 
a medal and a star, and I didn’t see why I should be left in the 
depot — I couldn’t stand it any longer.” 

“Stand what?” 

“ Not having a medal, sir ! ” 

Well orders are orders for colonels as for band-boys, so he had 
to go back ; but when the depot afterwards had to furnish a squadron 
for Suakin, he made good his case and was chosen for that service ; 
so among the men who got the medal and star, after all, was Alfred 
Titchener. Hadn’t he the making of a soldier in him ? Well, he 
has left the army. 

The other stowaway was named Connel. He had been under 
Williams-Freeman in the Cairo Military Police; just the one 
position in which a man could not well enjoy Cairo life. When 
he, too, was brought before the Colonel, he said, in answer to 
similar questions, that he had been with the regiment through both 
the 1882 and 1884 campaigns ; that where the regiment went he 
would like to go ; and that he did not think he ought to be debarred 
on account of being attached to the Military Police. But he had 
not been “passed,” and so he was sent back. For similar reasons 
he was not permitted to go to Suakin in 1885. Now I call that 
hard lines. What did he care about street duty at Cairo ? The 
regiment was his home, and those he had fought beside in two 
campaigns were his brothers. He has probably also left the army, 
and is likely to have a grudge against it to his dying day. These 
fellows showed the spirit that is so desirable, and that ought to be 


Zeal, in the Ranks, 


45 


cultivated ; but, as poor Barrow said, “ Orders are orders ” for all 
ranks. I know Barrow in these cases wished he could have gone 
against orders, for it was a like spirit he showed himself when, 
suffering from the spear- wound received at Suakin, from which he 
afterwards died, he concealed his pain, like the Spartan youth, 
rather than not lead his regiment to help in the rescue of Gordon. 
What’s that? He did not die in the Nile Campaign it is true, 
but he died from the old wound very soon after it, and what he 
must have suffered while he bore a smiling face is known only to 
the Almighty and His angels. Well might we of the Desert March 
put up a window to his memory. Ah, yes, Beresford and Talbot 
and Boscawen — how the old names do crop up ! — took the lead in 
that. 

“ Yes,” one of the others said, “ there is nothing the men hate so 
much as being kept out of fighting. I remember a case in Ashanti. 
One wing of the 4th King’s Own was going up with the advanced 
column, the other was two days’ march behind. Two privates in 
the advanced wing got hold of some palm wine or native beer, and 
got gloriously drunk on it. The next day they were had up in the 
Orderly tent, and Colonel Cameron, as a punishment, ordered them 
to be sent back to the wing in the rear. After leaving the tent, 
they had a consultation together, and returned and petitioned the 
colonel to flog them, instead of sending them back. Seeing that 
they were thoroughly in earnest, he consented. The next morning 
the regiment fell in, the triangles were erected, and the men stripped 
for punishment, but at the last moment the colonel forgave them, 
and they took their place in the ranks and entered Magdala with 
the regiment. It was a good display of spirit ; but I believe that 
nineteen out of twenty.British soldiers would make the same choice, 
and take a flogging rather than be sent to the rear, when there is a 
chance of fighting going on.’* 



46 


Camps and Quarters, 


I must say that I consider that a good deal of what I had to 
bear was due to my cousin Lucy. 1 think if she had left the men 
alone, and had not been always asking questions and starting new 
subjects and giving them fresh leads as it were, they would have 
been contented sometimes to have smoked their pipes quietly, but 
she was constantly setting them off. The second day after lunch, 
just after she came in, she asked a question that I saw at once was 
going to lead to an awful amount of infliction. If she had been 
sitting close to me, I should have nudged her or stopped her some- 
how, but it came out suddenly like a bomb-shell among us, “ I 
suppose you were in the Russian campaign.” I remember once when 
I was at Hampton Court I threw a bit of bread into one of the 
basins, and three big gold-fish rushed at it at once, and the way 
they squabbled and fought over it was awful. Well, that was nothing 
to those three men. Of course every one of them had been there 
and knew all about it, and there was quite a hubbub of voices, and 
then half a dozen short stories were told. They are all in Lucy’s book, 
but it is no use my giving too many of them, two will be enough in 
all conscience. The first of these was in answer to Lucy’s question, 
“ I suppose you saw the Czar, what was he like ? ” Girls are 
always wanting to know what men are like, and yet Lucy could 
hardly have been in earnest, because the Illustrated and Graphic 
gave no end of pictures of him. She could have spoken only 
to draw those men on. Of course it took ; one of them seemed 
to consider the question especially directed to him, he. squared 
his shoulders, and I saw at once this was going to be an even more 
wearisome affair than usual, so I settled myself in my chair, and 
sighed weariedly, shut my eyes, and I am happy to say dozed off 
before he had been at work many minutes. 



Zhe Bivine 3fiGure from tbe Bortb. 


The Romanoffs have always been a soldierly race. Peter the 
Great did a good deal of miscellaneous fighting in Finland and 
elsewhere, and commanded at the battle of Pultowa. Alexander 1 . 
marched across Europe to participate on PTench soil in the 
desperate fighting of Napoleon’s most brilliant campaign in the 
early months of 1814. Nicholas, lad as he was in years, was already 
a veteran in war when Mortier and Marmont had thrown up the 
sponge on the heights of Montmartre, and the Imperial father 
and son rode along the Champs Elysees at the head of the 
triumphal entry into Paris of the allied armies. Alexander II. 
crossed the Danube in 1877, with the march of invasion of Turkey, 
that ended only at the gates of Con.stantinople. Peter commanded 
in fact as well as in name ; he was perhaps a better shipwright than 
a general. Alexander I. was at least the nominal head of the 
Russian contingent in the great composite host of which Schwar- 
zenberg was actually the Commander-in-chief. But, in a strict 
military sense, Alexander II. had no definite position of any kind 
in the field. Head of the armies of Russia as he was, in virtue 
of his position as the Czar, he was nevertheless not the 
Commander-in-chief, even nominally, of the great hosts which his 
behest had drawn from the enthusiastic masses of his devoted 
subjects. That onerous duty and dignity he had assigned to his 
brother, the Grand Duke Nicholas. The emperor, in a military 
sense, made the campaign simply as an august spectator, for whom 
as monarch and as Russian the operations presented an engrossing 
interest, and whose presence in the field further inspired the 
nations with added fervour. Solomon’s adage that in the mul- 
titude of counsellors that there is wisdom, does not apply to war. 
“ Councils of war never fight,” has passed into a proverb ; if it was 
not true as regards the Russo-Turkish war, it must be owned that 
the battles directed by councils of war were not always judicious. 
The American historian of that war, commenting on the lack of 
unity in the command of the Russo- Roumanian armies which 
attempted unsuccessfully to carry Osman’s lines around Plevna, 
in September, 1877, thus alludes to the military effects of the 
emperor’s presence : — “ Finally the emperor was present, with the 


48 


Camps and Quarters, 

Minister of War and a large staff. The emperor came merely as a 
spectator, to encourage his troops by his presence, and in the hope 
of witnessing their victory. But the Emperor of Russia is regarded 
by every Russian soldier, from the highest to the lowest grade, 
with a feeling which it is difficult to explain in other countries ; at 
all times his will is law, and his wish a command, and it is not 
possible for him to be a mere spectator. He took no part, however, 
in the command, although every report and order was instantly 
communicated to him, until after the assault of the iith and I2th of 
September.” 

Alexander’s life on campaign was a life of extreme simplicity, of 
great seclusion, always of deep concern, and at times of intense 
anguish. He was not strictly in the field until he had crossed the 
Danube ; but, for more than a fortnight before doing so, he lived a 
sort of campaign life in a little country house a few rods to the 
westward of the miserable Roumanian village of Simnitza, over- 
hanging the bed of the great river. He himself had accommodation 
here under a roof, but most of his numerous entourage dwelt in tents 
among the trees of the little park, and in the adjoining paddocks. 
He sat at meals with the suite in a great marquee on the lawn ; but 
the repasts served there partook rather too much of the Duke 
Humphrey sort of fare to accord with the tastes of the dainty 
aristocrats who, in their various capacities, or in no capacity at all, 
were in attendance on their sovereign ; and they were lavish patrons, 
occasionally neglecting to pay their bills, of the temporary restau- 
rant which Brofft, the Bucharest hotel-keeper, had set up close to 
the gate of the boyard’s chateau in which the emperor quartered. 
Under the canvas roof of the hostelry where Muller, Herr Brofft’s 
head man, served dubious champagne at twelve roubles a bottle, 
members of the Imperial family and the nobles and generals of 
the suite made very merry, no matter how things were going on 
the further side of the river. But the emperor himself was scarcely 
seen outside the gates of his own habitation, save to visit the 
hospitals in which lay the wounded of the crossing, or to drive to a 
point commanding some long stretch of the great river and the 
undulating Bulgarian region beyond its swift, brown current. He 
always travelled on wheels. I don’t remember to have seen him 
oftener than twice on horseback during the whole campaign. The 
Russians, indeed, are not an equestrian people, that is, they are not 
addicted to riding because of a love for the saddle. A Russian if 
he has the choice, will always sooner drive than ride ; and even on 
campaign it was nothing uncommon to see a general at the head 
of his division on the march, snugly ensconced in a comfortable 
carriage. 

The day after Dragomiroff had carried the passage of the 
Danube opposite Simnitza, the Czar crossed the river for the 
purpose of visiting Sistova, the Bulgarian town on the Turkish 
side, and of thanking in person the gallant division which had 


49 


The Divine Figure from the North. 

so valiantly fought its way across the great river, and carried the 
heights on the other side. There was no formal review ; the 
troops were already too widely dispersed for that. Yolchine's 
brigade, the one which had crossed first, had got under arms as the 
emperor came up from the river’s brink ; and Generals Dragomiroff 
and Yolchine stood in front of it, along with the young General 
Skobeleff, who had shown brilliant valour and all his rare gift of 
leadership, in the action of the previous day. The troops replied 
to the emperor’s greeting in accents which were eloquent of an 
emotion of absolute adoration ; the simple private men gazed on 
their Czar with entranced eyes of childlike love and awe. 

His aspect on that day, when as yet anxiety and ill-health had 
not broken him down, was singularly imposing. It was Charles 
Brackenbury who applied to him the term which I have placed at 
the head of this article ; but he did not invent it. It was the 
exact translation of the phrase in which the Bulgarians of Sistova 
hailed the potentate who on that afternoon when first his foot touched 
their soil, shone before their eyes as the more than mortal being 
who was to be their Saviour, their Redeemer from the rule of the 
heathen. At that moment they would have worshipped him. 
They cooled in their adoration presently, and before the campaign 
was over, there were among them those who openly said that 
since they were seemingly to be a subject race, they preferred to be^ 
subject to the Turk rather than to the Russian. 

The glamour of the hour stirred to idealization the stolid, sel^^. 
centred Bulgarians ; but the most indifferent spectator could i?pt 
but realize the nobility of Alexander’s presence, as he returned the 
greeting of his victorious soldiers. A man not far off sixt^y, he 
then looked exceptionally young for his age ; the long,, dark 
moustache showed hardly a streak of grey, and the majestiq figure 
was as straight as a pine. He looked a very king of men;, ^s with 
soldierly gait he strode up to Dragomeroff, shook him qordially by 
the hand, and arrested his attempt at obeisance by clasping^ him in^ 
a hearty embrace. Tough old Yolchine was similarly honoured, 
but the Czar turned away from young Skobeleff with a frown, for' 
that brilliant officer had returned from Central Asia under a cloud 
of baseless accusation, and the opportunity for vindication had not; 
yet been permitted. 

Gourko dashed across the Balkans on that promising but 
abortive raid of his, and the advance-guard of the Army of the 
Lorn,” to the command of which the Cezarewitch was appointed, 
pushed slowly eastward till it came within sight of the earthwork^ 
which the Turks were throwing up as an outer circle of defence 
to the fortress of Rustchuk. The Emperor and his suite had 
meantime crossed the Danube, and following in the track of the 
eastward advance, had taken up quarters in a great farmyard near 
the village of Pavlo,aposition fairly central for receiving intelligence 
from both lines of advance, and also within easy reach of the 


50 


Camps and Quarters, 

bridge across the river at Simnitza. Some ten days later, the 
Imperial headquarters moved further eastward, into the little 
town of Biela, in the direct rear of the Cesarewitch’s command. 
At Biela the headquarters were for several weeks in the enclosed 
yard of a dismantled Turkish house, which the Bulgarians had 
quitted when its occupants fled. A high wattled fence surrounded 
this yard, in which grew a few willow-trees that afforded some 
shade. The bureaux were in the battered Turkish house. The 
Emperor lived in two officer’s tents, communicating with each 
other by a canvas-screened alley, up in a corner of the yard under 
the willow-trees. In the centre of the yard was the large dining 
marquee in which the emperor joined at meals the officers of his 
suite, and such of the foreign military attaches as were not in the 
headquarters of the commander-in-chief. He was wont to break- 
fast alone in his own tent, where he worked all the morning with 
Milutin the Minister of War, Ignatieff the Diplomatist, Adlerberg 
the chamberlain of the palace and the emperor’s foster brother, 
and other high officials who solicited interviews. It must be 
remembered that from this camp far away in Bulgaria, the 
emperor was administering the affairs of a huge empire whose 
capital was many hundred miles distant. 

At noon luncheon was served in the great marquee, and all the 
suite were wont to gather in the yard for conversation a short time 
in advance. The emperor came out from his own private tent, 
shaking hands with the nearest members of the suite, greeting 
always the foreign attaches, as he passed into the marquee. His 
seat was in the centre of the right-hand side of the table, usually 
with General Suwaroff on one side of him and General Milutin on 
the other, the foreign attaches sitting opposite. The greatest 
simplicity prevailed in the fare served at the Imperial table ; three 
courses were the rule at dinner, and champagne was given only on 
exceptional occasions. When the time for coffee came, the 
emperor gave the signal for smoking, and immediately the 
marquee was filled with a cloud of cigarette smoke. He was 
wont to talk freely at table, directing most of his conversation to 
the foreign officers opposite to him, and occasionally, especially 
when addressing Colonel Wellesley, the British representative, his 
tone was that of grave badinage. 

No elaborate precautions were to outward seeming taken for 
the emperor’s safety, living here in Biela in the midst of a curiously- 
mixed population of wretched Bulgarians and prowling Turks — 
for all the Turks had not fled from Biela. His only escort consisted 
of a handful of the cossacks of the Imperial guard on duty at the 
entrance of the yard in which he lived. He drove out every day, 
attended by an escort of a dozen of these ; and he would make 
the round on foot of the hospitals in the environs of the little 
town, accompanied by a single companion, a cossack following a 
little distance behind. He spent many an hour in talking with 


51 


The Divine Figure from the North. 

the poor ailing fellows in the wretched hospitals, to whom his 
kindly presence did more good than all the efforts of the surgeons. 
Once during a drive his eye fell upon a miserable company of 
Turkish fugitives, among whom were many women and children, 
lurking in a wood. He at once alighted and went among them, 
and by assurances of protection he succeeded in prevailing on them 
to return to their homes in Biela, where he had them supplied 
with rations until they were able to do something for themselves. 

After the disaster met with by Kriidener and Shackoskoy in 
front of Plevna on the 30th of July, and Gourko’s enforced 
retirement to the Bulgarian side of the Balkans, the Imperial head- 
quarters were moved westward to a village called Gorni Studen, 
about equidistant from Plevna, Sistova and Tirnova. Biela had 
become poisonous by reason of an utter disregard of all sanitary 
precautions, and the emperor had been ailing from low fever, 
rheumatism, and asthma, the last his chronic ailment. At Gorni 
Studen he abandoned tent-life, and only occasionally came to the 
general table in the mess marquee. A dismantled Turkish house 
was fitted up for him after a fashion, and his bed-room was a tiny 
chamber with mud walls and a mud floor. It was in the balcony 
of this house where I had an interview with him in August, when 
I had ridden in from the Shipka with the unexpected good news 
that Radetski was holding his own stoutly in the St. Nicholas 
position among the Shipka rocks, against the fierce assaults of 
Mehemet Ali’s Turks. 

I had a difficulty in recognizing him, so changed was he from 
the early days at Simnitza. He had shrunken visibly, he stooped, 
his head had gone down between his shoulders, and his voice was 
broken and tremulous. He was gaunt, worn, and haggard, his 
nervous system seemed quite shattered. There was a hunted 
expression in his eye, and he gasped for breath in the spasms of 
the asthma that afflicted him. I left him with the vivid appre- 
hension that he was not to break the spell that was said to 
condemn every Romanoff to the grave before the age of sixty. 

The spell of course was nonsense, yet it is the fact that Czar 
Alexander’s father, and the four male Romanoffs of the generation 
preceding Nicholas, the sons of the mentally affected Emperor 
Paul, died before the attainment of this age, and of disease affecting 
the brain. Alexander I., who was Napoleon’s enemy, his friend, 
and then again his bitter and successful enemy, died at the age of 
forty-eight in a deep, brooding, melancholy, which Metternich 
described as a “ weariness of life.” His elder brother, the Grand 
Duke Constantine, had the good sense to know that his mental 
condition rendered him unfit to rule. If he had been a private 
person, he would probably have spent most of his life in an asylum. 
He died in his fifty-second year of congestion of the brain. The 
Grand Duke Michael ended his life by falling from his horse in a 
fit at the age of forty-eight, and had shown before his death so 

E 2 


52 


Camps and Quarters. 

much morbid irritability, that his physician did not hesitate to 
treat him as insane. If the Western Powers had temporized for 
two years with the imperious Nicholas, he would have been dead, 
and there would have been no Crimean War. And it is the fact 
that the professional assurance had been communicated to the 
English Government so early as 1853, that Nicholas had at most 
only two years to live ; he died four months before the two years 
were up. A well-known English physician, Dr. A. B. Granville, 
had detected in Nicholas the symptoms of the hereditary disease 
of his family, from which he predicted his death within the term 
mentioned. He communicated his prognosis to Lord Palmerston, 
as a strong argument for the maintenance of a temporizing policy 
until death should have delivered Russia and Europe from a Czar 
whose mental balance was disturbed. The authenticity of this 
letter, which was published in the Times in 1855, was vouched 
for to Count Vitzthum on the day of its publication by Lord 
Palmerston himself, who added that the English Government could 
be guided only by facts, and could not allow their policy to be 
influenced by the opinion of a physician. 

As epilepsy is the domestic curse of the Hapsburgs, so hypo- 
chondria is the family malady of the Romanoffs. Alexander was 
a prey to it in the Gorni Studen hovel. But it had not full sway 
over him. There was something wonderfully pathetic in the 
eagerness with which he grasped at the expressed belief of an 
unprofessional neutral like myself, in the face of the apprehensions 
to the contrary of all about him, that Radetski would be able to 
make good the tenure of his position on the top of the Shipka. 

The Czar was present in the field during the six days’ struggle 
around Plevna, in the September of the war. The sappers had 
constructed for him on a little eminence out of the usual line of 
hostile fire, a sort of look-out place from which was visible a great 
sweep of the scene of action. Behind it was a marquee in which 
was a long table continually spread with food and wine, where the 
suite supported nature jovially while men were dying hard by in 
their thousands. As for the Czar himself, after the first two days he 
neither ate nor drank. Anxiety visibly devoured him. He could 
not be restrained from leaving the observatory and going around 
among the gunners. I watched him on the little balcony of the 
look-out place, late on the afternoon of the fifth day of the struggle 
— it was his fete-day save the mark ! — as he stood there in the 
sullen autumn weather, gazing out with haggard, straining eyes, 
at the efforts to storm the great Grivitza redoubt. Assault after 
assault had been delivered ; assault after assault had failed ; now 
the final desperate struggle was being made, the forlorn hope of 
the day. The Turkish fire crushed down his Russians as they 
battled their way up the slope, slippery already with Roumanian 
blood : the pale face on the balcony quivered, and the tall figure 
winced and cowered. As he stood there bearing his cross in 


The Divine Figure from the North, 53 

solitary anguish, he was a spectacle of majestic misery that could 
never be forgotten. 

After Plevna had fallen in December, the emperor returned to 
St. Petersburg, there to be greeted with a reception, the like of 
which for pure enthusiasm I have never witnessed. From the 
railway- station he drove straight to the Kasan Cathedral, in 
accordance with the custom which presents to Russian Emperors 
that in setting out for or returning from any enterprise, they shall 
kiss the glittering image of the Holy Virgin of Kasan which the 
Cathedral enshrines. Its interior was a wonderful spectacle. 
People had spent the night sleeping on the marble floor that they 
might be sure of a place in the morning. There had been no 
respect of persons in the admissions. The mujik in his skins stood 
next the soldier-noble whose bosom glittered with decorations. 
The peasant woman and the princess knelt together at the same 
shrine. At the tinkle of a bell the great doors were thrown wide 
open and on the surge of cold air was borne a great throbbing 
volume of sounds, the roar of the cheering of vast multitudes, the 
booming of artillery, the clash of the pealing joy-bells. In stately 
procession the emperor reached the altar, bent his head, and his 
lips touched the sacred image. When he turned to leave the 
building, the wildest confusion of enthusiasm laid hold of the 
throng. His people closed in about the Czar till he had no power 
to move. The great struggle was but to touch him, and the chaos 
of policemen, officers, shrieking women, and enthusiastic peasants 
swayed and heaved to and fro ; the emperor in the centre, pale, 
his lips trembling with emotion, just as I had seen him when his 
troops were cheering him on the battlefield ; struggling for the bare 
possibility to stand or move forward, for he was lilted by the 
pressure clean off his feet, and whirled about helplessly. At 
length, extricated by a wedge of officers, he reached his carriage, 
only to experience almost as wonderful an ovation when he 
reached the raised portico of the Winter Palace. As for the 
Czarevna, the lady who is now empress of Russia, her experiences 
at the Winter Palace were unique. As her carriage, lollowing that 
of the emperor, approached the terrace, the populace utilized it as 
a point whence to see and cheer the emperor. Men scrambled 
on to the horses, the box, the roof, the wheels ; progress became 
utterly impossible. A group of cadets and students, who lined the 
base of the terrace, were equal to the occasion. They dragged 
open the carriage door by dint of immense exertion ; they lifted 
out the bright little lady, who clearly was greatly enjoying the fun, 
and they passed her from hand to hand above their heads, till the 
emperor caught her, lifted her over the balustrades, and set her 
down by his side on the terrace. I saw the metal heels of her 
remarkably neat boots sparkling in the winter sunshine over the 
heads of the throng. 

The fall of Plevna, and the welcome of his capital, had restored 


54 


Camps and Quarters. 

the Czar to apparent health and spirits. I watched him as he moved 
around the great salon of the Winter Palace, greeting his guests at 
the home-coming reception. He strode the inlaid floor a very 
emperor, upright of figure, proud of gait, arrayed in a brilliant 
uniform, and covered with decorations. A glittering court and 
suite thronged about the stately man with enthusiastically 
respectful homage ; the dazzling splendour of the Winter Palace 
formed the setting of the sumptuous picture ; and as I gazed on 
the magnificent scene, I could hardly realize that the central figure 
of it, in the pomp of his Imperial state, was of a verity the self- 
same man in whose presence I had stood in the squalid Bulgarian 
hovel, the same worn, anxious, shabby, wistful man, who with 
spasmodic utterance and the expression in his eyes as of a hunted 
deer, had asked me breathless questions as to the episodes and 
issue of the fighting. 

In many respects the monarch whom the Nihilists slew was a 
grand man. He was ab.'^olutely free from that corruption which 
is the blackest curse of Russia, and whose taint is among the 
nearest relatives of the Great White Czar. He had the purest 
aspirations to do his loyal duty toward the huge empire over which 
he ruled, and never did he spare himself in toilsome work. He 
took few pleasures; the melancholy of his position made sombre 
his features, and darkened for him all the brightness of life. For 
he had the bitterest consciousness of the abuses that were alienating 
the subjects who had been wont in their hearts, as on their lips, to 
couple the names of “ God and the Czar.” He knew how the great 
nation writhed and groaned ; and he, absolute despot though 
he was, writhed and groaned no less in the realization of his 
impotency to ameliorate the evils. For although honest and 
sincerely well intentioned, there was a fatal weakness in the nature 
of Alexander 1 1. True, he began his reign with an assertion of 
masterfulness ; but then, unworthy favourites gained his ear ; his 
family compassed him about ; the whole huge vis inertice of im- 
memorial rottenness and obstructive officialism lay doggedly 
athwart the hard path of reform. Alexander’s aspirations were 
powerless to pierce the dense, solid obstacle ; and the consciousness 
of his impotency, with the no less disquieting consciousness that 
it behoved him to cleanse the Augsean stable of the State, embit- 
tered his whole later life. 



55 


The sudden stoppage of the monotonous flow of words woke me 
suddenly. Lucy was just murmuring something about very 
interesting. I have often wondered to myself how even the 
straightest women will tell what we may call civil lies ; but I 
thought that Lucy would really have this quite heavily on her con- 
science afterwards. I think she noticed that I lifted my eyebrows, 
and that it was purely out of spite that she asked me, “ Don’t you 
think so ? ” I was too taken aback to answer at the moment, and 
I was thinking how I could put it civilly, without telling a down- 
right lie, when she went on. “ That account of the hand to hand 
fight between the Cossack and the Turk was very exciting, was it 
not ? ” Of course, as I had not heard a word, I did not know what 
she meant ; but I said, “Yes, that part of the story was certainly 
exciting.” Then Lucy laughed, and the three fellows roared, and 
I saw that she had just been humbugging me, which was not at all a 
cousinly sort of thing to do, I considered. However, I lit a fresh 
cigar, and said that when a fellow’s leg kept him awake at nights, 
there was nothing very extraordinary that 1 could see in his dosing 
off occasionally. I hoped, anyhow, that this little affair would put 
the Russian Campaign out of their minds, but the subject was too 
hot, and one of the others, who had no doubt, been sitting on 
thorns while the first was having his innings, broke in, — 

“ It was a curious affair, that surrender of the Turkish lines, just 
before the Armistice. I heard the story both from Skobelefl' and 
from Moukhtar, and got at all the ins and outs of it.” 

And then he went straight off, being afraid, I expect, that the 
third man would cut in before him. Of course I could not get to 
sleep this time, and had to listen to the whole thing ; but I am bound 
to say that at the end, who had deceived who, or how it all came 
about, I had not the least idea. There was one comfort, that it did 
not matter a rap one way or the other. This fellow, I observed, 
always told his stories in the third person. I suppose he had what 
fellows call a dramatic turn of mind, or else he wanted to get rid of 
the I, that the other two were always lugging in. Anyhow, it 
made a change, and as he gave some sort of imitation of the way 
the people talked, it did not make one so drowsy as the stories 
where they kept on in the same tone of voice. 



Hcbmefs XTreason.* 


Very pale and careworn looked Sultan Abdul Hamed II., as he 
sat in his council-chamber in his favourite palace of Yildiz Kiosk, 
or the Star Villa, on the hill behind Beshiktash, what time a January 
day was dawning eleven years ago. Early as it was, the council 
was fully attended. Indeed, it had been summoned over-night, 
and had sat through the small hours. There was old Ahmed 
Vefyk, the Grand Vizier, although he preferred to be called Prime 
Minister ; there were Valentine Baker Pacha, and Reouf Pacha, and 
Fuad Pacha, and a throng of civilian pachas, besides the First 
Secretary of his Majesty. Two deaf and dumb mulatto boys 
stood by the portieres with wands to carry messages which they 
could not comprehend. Most of the civilians sat on divans round 
the chamber ; most of the soldiers v/ere at a large table covered 
with maps, especially maps of the Nose of Thrace. All were in 
full dress, their gold-laced uniforms flashing with diamonds in the 
orders they wore ; the Sultan alone had but a plain frock coat 
buttoned closely up, and with no more ornament than a clerk in 
the Ministry of Finance. There was a singular silence considering 
how many were present, for his Majesty had begun to speak and 
then stopped, and leaned his head on his hand as if musing. None 
cared to break the imperial reverie. At that moment the National 
air was heard, and the clash of arms as the guard outside saluted. 
The mutes raised the portieres ; all but the Sultan stood up as 
there entered in simple undress blue sack coat with red piping, and 
not even a bit of ribbon on the breast to relieve it, Ghazi Ahmed 
Moukhtar Pacha, charged with the defence of the capital from the 
advancing Muscovite. hordes. The Mushir made lowly reverence 
to the monarch, and then took his place at the table. 

“ You are late, my friend,” said the Ottoman emperor ; “but not 
too late, and I am well assured you have slept no more than we. 
My troops ... ? ” 

“ Are all hard at work, your Majesty ; such devotion even I have 
never seen before.” 

“ It is well; my friend ; we need your advice. Here is a message 
just delivered from the English Eltchi, who says, — 

* Notice : this story has been dramatised. 



Achmefs Treason. 


57 


“ ‘ Your Majesty^s request for aid was fully telegraphed last night 
in cypher to London, and the reply has just arrived that a meeting 
of the Cabinet has been summoned for this afternoon. Meanwhile 
I am to say to your Majesty that England will not see the Ottoman 
Empire reduced to extremity.’ ” 

“Extremity!” cried Fuad Pacha; “why, the Giaours, I mean 
the Muscovs, are within fifty miles I ” 

“ But yesterday the Eltchi told me that England is resolved the 
Russians shall not have Constantinople. If they have all else, why 
not Stamboul also ? For myself I care nothing,” answered his 
Majesty ; “ if my country is lost, the fact that England does not 
wish the Czar to rule the Bosphorus is no consolation, and . . . 
remember how I was encouraged to resist I ” 

“ Sire, time presses,” said Moukhtar, as vehemently as his quiet 
nature and respect for his sovereign would permit. “ The Muscov 
is within two days’ march of my lines at Tchataldja.” 

“ Truly, then, let us decide on our defence . . . till England takes 
her resolve,” sadly spoke Abdul Hamid. 

“ All is ready, my liege, if I have only men enough. The earth- 
works are completed and armed with three hundred guns. Thanks 
to American supplies, there is ample ammunition. All the works 
have provisions for five days. As I said in Asia to an Englishman, 
your Majesty’s soldiers need nothing at any time but biscuits, 
shoes, and cartridges, and these they have now. Fuad Pacha 
answers for my right ; Baker Pacha for my centre ; Reouf Pacha 
for my left. But I want ten thousand men more.” 

“ Alas 1 ” was the melancholy reply of majesty. 

“ My lines,” contined Moukhtar, “ are twenty miles long, all of 
which must be held ; but I need apprehend a fight along eight 
miles only, and for those eight miles I have but 25,000 men. 
With 35,000, they should be safe; with 45,000, I could hold them 
against the world, so long as our ships cover my flanks.” 

One of the mutes here advanced with a telegram which was 
opened by Ahmed Vefyk. 

“Your Majesty,” said he, “ten thousand men, the remnant of 
the army of Sulicman, but mostly without arms, are being shipped 
at Enos and elsewhere, and will be here to-morrow.” 

The sad expression for an instant left the face of the Sultan, and 
Moukhtar broke in, — 

“ With these men, worn out though they be, I will answer for 
the safety of Stamboul.” 

“ Then let them be clad and armed and sent to the lines at 
once,” said the wearied Padishah. 

“ But, sire,” pleaded a civilian pacha named Achmet, “your own 
safety, if the Mushir should deceive himself 

“ Allah-il-Allah ; it is in His hands.” 

“ Sire, I would that you sent to the Russians, and asked them 
for an armistice,” persisted Achmet. 


58 Camps and Quarters, 

“Yes, yes,” cried another or two, “if they will stay where they 
are!” 

“ On those terms,” replied the Grand Vizier, “yes, indeed, time 
is safety.” 

“ But for the Muscovs time is loss ; the winter is killing them,” 
said Said Pacha with a grin. 

“ I would rather trust the Russians than the English,” observed 
Mahmoud Pacha. 

“And I,” softly added Achmet ; “besides, we could only fail, 
and even to gain two days in negotiation would be something.” 

“Two days would be everything,” Moukhtar declared ; “but I 
would treat, not yield.” 

Fuad and Baker expressed their concurrence. 

“Then whom shall I send ?” asked his Majesty. 

“I propose that we send Achmet Pacha,” put in Mahmoud, 
“ and my office will find his staff.” 

“ It is understood that Achmet Pacha goes as soon as possible 
through our lines to Adrianople,” said the Sultan, with revived 
spirit in his voice and manner, “ and there treats with the brother 
of the Czar. But only to gain time, not to yield. And if the 
great prince is as generous as he is brave, he will not drive me to 
extremity.” 

“ Ah, sire,” quoth Moukhtar, “ if you look for generosity from a 
Russ, you will find good faith among the Greeks, and valour 
among the Armenians.” 

“ 1 quite understand,” interrupted Achmet, “ that I am only to 
obtain delay till England’s answer comes. After that — ” 

Here one of the mutes handed Moukhtar a letter. 

“ Sire I here is a summons to surrender the lines of Tchataldja, 
addressed to me, ‘with much respect’ from General Skobeleff. 
My A.D.C. and good cousin Osman has just brought it in. The 
Muscovs demand possession, with all guns, in forty-eight hours 
from to-day at dawn. Majesty, I suppose I know my 
answer ? ” 

“Yes,” exclaimed the Sultan rising with heightened colour ; “ if 
they want the lines, let them take them. Weaker works have 
before now defied the efforts of other Gotlis, and what Belisarius 
could do to the Huns on yonder position, that can Ghazi Moukhtar 
do to the Russians there.” 

“ Never, sire,” replied the Mushir, “ has Stamboul fallen when 
defended there, save when it has succumbed to treason within. 
Oh, master, beware of treason I ” 

“ Who speaks of treason ? ” shouted Mahmoud. 

“ I,” quietly said Moukhtar. 

“ And whose } ” demanded Achmet. 

“ I am not a prophet,” replied Moukhtar, with a smile, “ though 
I have studied astrology. But I say again, the crown of the 
Bosphorus has never fallen in fair fight ; it has been betrayed ; and 
what has been may be/’ 


Achme£s Treason, 


59 


*‘We might spare his Majesty unnecessary anxiety; there 
is enough without speculation on the improbable,” said Mah- 
moud. 

“ It is the improbable, or at least the unexpected which happens,” 
retorted Moukhtar. 

“ If your Majesty is as faithfully served behind the lines of 
Tchataldja as in front of them, all is not lost,” observed Achmet. 

“ But time presses,” Mahmoud urged ; “ haste, good Achmet 
Effendim, the Russians ever advance, and we stay here combating 
dreams.” 

“ I trust not dreams which come true,” said Moukhtar to him- 
self. 

“ Farewell, good Vizier Achmet,” broke in the Sultan ; “ our 
trust is in Allah and you.” 

As Achmet and Mahmoud were leaving the Council Chamber, 
Moukhtar spoke again. 

“ Say rather, sire, in Allah and the Prophet and your army.” 

“ Ah ! I had ! ” moaned the distracted monarch ; but how many 
armies have broken down on my side ! ” 

Moukhtar gravely answered, ‘ Sire, even in 1829 the Russians 
did not dare to pass Tchorlu and Midia or face positions which 
were then unfortified, but have now been strengthened on the 
advice of the English engineer Chesney, till, as he said, they are 
another Torres Vedras. Besides, we must remember, if we are 
somewhat demoralized, the enemy has been much weakened by 
his winter campaign, and if the worst should come to the worst, 
better we should all perish in the flames of Stamboul than yield 
the sacred city to the foe which has sought it for a thousand years, 
or conclude a dishonourable treaty, selling your birthright. Ah ! 
sire, when I am firm on the lines be you firm in the divan. More 
is lost by concession than by the sword. And we may preserve 
our religion and our honour.” 

The Sultan here embraced Moukhtar and left the chamber amid 
profound obeisances, attended by his Secretary. Then Moukhtar 
turned to Reouf, Fuad, and Baker. 

“ Let us go out to the lines.” He added to Ahmed Vefyk and 
Said, — 

“ Beware of treason. In writing out Achmet’s powers, limit him 
to reference, and let the decision be with you, and not with him, or 
all is lost.” 

“Then why did you not oppose his nomination?*' demanded 
Said. 

“ Because I can prove nothing. But beware of treason in the 
Council.” 

******* 

General Skobeleff, big, fair, hearty, jovial, though the loose folds 
of his undress coat and the lines in his bearded face told of the hard- 
ships he had undergone, stood at his advance-posts on the bare rolling 


6o 


Camps and Quarters, 

ground east of Tchorlu in the midst of the Nose of Thrace. Near 
him was the i6th Division of the Russian Army, not the famous 
1 6 th, for that had been so nearly annihilated on the Green Hills at 
Plevna that it had been reconstituted. Beside him was Colonel 
Muller, his chief of the staff, and both of them, holding maps in 
their hands, were at the same time examining with field-glasses the 
contour of the country in front of them. 

“ It is very strong, general,” said Muller ; “ even stronger than we 
found the Loftcha road redoubts, and we are not likely to forget 
them, I think.” 

'‘Yes,” Skobeleff replied, as though he were calculating a chess 
move; “as strong, but not so strongly held, perhaps. This 
Moukhtar was beaten before, you know, though it is true Meiikoff 
and Lazareff had two to his one.” 

“But he beat them for months,” Muller replied; “so long as 
forces were nearly equal, and I believe Lazareff tried him several 
times. What Lazareff failed in, it is no discredit to any man to 
shrink from.” 

“ Indeed, yes,” said Skobeleff, “so far as I can understand the 
Armenian campaign, Moukhtar behaved very well, but here is not 
a position like Zewin or the Aladja Dagh.” 

“It is stronger,” Muller urged ; “ because, unlike them, it cannot 
be turned. 

“ Then it must be taken ! ” 

“It will cost a brigade ! ” 

“ If it cost a division ! ” 

“ That redoubt near the watershed is the key of the position,” said 
Muller. 

“Your judgment is right. That redoubt must be carried by 
assault. But I shall attack on both flanks, then concentrate on the 
left, for it will suit me as well to take Belgrad Forest, and hold the 
Euxine Mouth of the Bosphorus, as to take the city, and in the act 
of concentrating from the right deliver a division at yonder key 
redoubt” 

“ Constantinople lies at your feet,” Muller opined. 

“ Oh dear no ! ” answered Skobeleff, “ there is a second line, not 
so well armed or so strong, but yet formidable, six miles from the 
walls. And that second line I do not mean to touch, but to turn 
by what you Germans — ” 

“ General ! ” 

“Was not your father a German, Muller? Well, well; some 
Germans are my dearest friends, and you first and best of them. 
By what these German maps call the Wald von Belgrad, and the 
English Belgrad Wood. But it is a big wood — one of those 
woods in which the English joke says the wood cannot be seen for 
the trees. Holding Belgrad, I hold the Bosphorus.” 

Yes, and the water-supply of the city. So ! ” 


Achmet^s Treason. 


6i 


“And I will make my headquarters in the English Embassy 
at Therapia, a comfortable house, I am told, with fair cellars.” 

Here the green-coated Russians were approached by a tall, slim, 
dark man, in a loose blue jacket and blue kepi, and a short, fair 
man, in a Norfolk jacket and a soft felt hat. 

“ Ah, general, assault to-morrow ? ” said the latter, who was 
named McGahan. 

“ Perhaps,” replied Skobeleff. “ Captain Greene, will you kindly 
take my glass ? The key is the great redoubt, I think.” 

The American attach^ answered, “ It would seem so, but it is 
held in strength, and is very like No. 7 at Plevna. The whole line 
is strongly held.” 

“ Is it any use staying here ? ” McGahan interrupted. “ I think 
yon gun is training on us, and you would be missed to-morrow, 
general.” 

“ Yes,” said Skobeleff, “ there is no need to take risks, except for 
example’s sake, and my work to-day is nearly done. See that the 
horses are put in safety, and let us lie down and eat.” 

At this moment a shrapnel shell burst nearly overhead. 

“ Just in time to flavour our sausages,” laughed Skobeleff. “ But 
except by accident they can’t hurt us. Now, McGahan, here’s to 
the beauties of Stamboul ! Muller, always susceptible, here’s to 
your fortunes with the fair Turk ! Greene, here’s to — whoever may 
prove an excuse for the glass.” Before he could carry the flask 
cup to his lips, a piece of shell knocked it out of his hand. “ What 
a waste of good liquor!” he cried. “But I forgot, Mahomet 
forbids wine and raki.” 

“So he might,” observed McGahan, “ if it’s like the stuff of these 
parts. Oh, for a noggin of Hollywood Old Rye or Coleraine ! ” 

“ See, here comes an orderly,” said Greene ; “ Great Scott, he’s 
down— only the horse hurt ; see, the man crawls along. Why, it’s 
your incorrigible Irishman, McGahan.” 

“ I would have been an Irishman myself but for an accident of a 
voyage,” laughed the correspondent. 

“ Come on, Pat,” shouted Skobeleff, “ get up, man ; this is not 
half as hot as it was in Spain. I’m ashamed to see you crawling 
like a worm.” 

“An’ if I don’t crawl,” Pat replied, “sure I’ll nivir git to you. 
My ancle’s no good to me at all, bad scran to it.” Here Skobeleff 
and McGahan jumped to his aid. “ An’ my blessin’s on ye both 
for gintlemen. But sure it isn’t blown aff me. Ah, the poor 
baste just gave one roll and the saddle caught me there — ah 1 
masther dear, is it a drop of whisky ye have, or anything Russian 
or Turkish, so long as it’s liquor.” 

“ Not a drop,” said McGahan, “a shell just blew the last away. 
But try a blast of your pipe.” 

“ Let me see,” cried Skobeleff, stooping, and twisting the ancle 
back, “ is that better .? Oh, you’re not dead yet, Pat.” 


62 


Camps and Quarters. 

“ Divil a fear of me, sir, not dead till I see the Sultan’s houris 
yonder, and then I’ll die wi’ delight, or they lie.” 

“ I will ride in and send out a litter,” volunteered Greene ; “ but 
by the v/ay, Pat, what brought you here ?” 

‘‘Think o’ that, now,” replied the Hibernian, “and me to forgit 
the letther from the Imperor’s brother.” 

Skobeleff took the letter, opened and read it aloud, — 

“ Report if you can attack to-morrow, and what support you 
require. We are not strong, so do not attack unless you are con- 
fident. Do nothing rashly. A defeat now would imperil the whole 
gains of the campaign.” 

“True,’^ said Greene. 

“ Indeed, and he’s very prudent — if that’s the word,” grumbled 
McGahan. 

“ Still it is left to me,” mused Skobeleff, half aloud. 

“ Yes, the responsibility,” Muller urged. 

“ And the danger,” McGahan put in. 

“ And the honour,” said Greene firmly. 

“ As we have been together through so many risks,” McGahan 
continued, “ you will not think me cowardly if I say that telegram 
means that the Grand Duke intends you to attack at your own risk. 
General Gourko’s hand is there.” 

“ Ha ! ” almost shouted Skobeleff, “ do you think he wants the 
Guard to have time to arrive } Here, MiilPer ; take it down for 
general orders, we attack at dawn. The fire will open on both 
flanks. In concentrating towards the left the new 1 6 th Division 
will carry the centre redoubt, at any cost, mind. And you will see 
all arranged accordingly, my good Muller. Details to generals of 
brigade under your inspection. Individuality will be needed as 
well as plan to-morrow. Let them all survey their own ground. 
Send an orderly or a telegram to General Gourko that I may need 
one of his brigades to occupy the Turkish works about ten 
o’clock. He need not hurry before that. What’s this — } ” 

Here an orderly came up and handed Skobeleff a telegram. 

“ Bah ! ” he exclaimed, frowning and biting his lip. “ Baulked ! 
Ha, ha ! They are negotiating for peace. Achmet Pacha is at 
Adrianople, and wants me to hold on until he can come to terms. 
Likely, very ! ” 

“ The Grand Duke will oblige him,” observed Greene, “ for 
policy will come in and moderation will look well in the eyes of 
Europe.” 

“ Nay,” said the general, “it will be ascribed to English threats.” 

“ England won’t fight,” exclaimed McGahan ; “ not likely. And 
she couldn’t if she would. The time has gone.” 

“ Muller ! ” cried Skobeleff, “ my orders remain as they were ; we 
shall see what the night brings forth. Telegraph the Grand Duke 
and say that unless I have orders before five o’clock I attack at 
dawn. And now for a doze.” • , • 


Achmet^ s Treason, 63 

“Where is the general?” called loudly A.D.C. Lieut. Prince 
Paskewitch. 

“Ah, General SkobelefF; you know I was taken prisoner. Well, 
I have escaped and brought with me proof positive that England 
does not interfere. It has been kept back from the Sultan, but an 
Armenian, who helped me to escape, sold me a copy of the 
telegram for an order for 5000 roubles on the Imperial Treasury. 
But I am faint. . .” 

“ Here, some of you, take the lieutenant — I mean the captain 
— to Colonel Muller’s tent, and tell the colonel I am here. Poor 
Abdul Hamid, poor Moukhtar Pacha ! aye, poor Turkey ! Traitors 
within and weak sons ; traitors without and strong foes ! ” Here 
he began to hum “ the Cossack’s Farewell,” and strolled about, 
presently muttering, “ To take Constantinople — immortality ! to 
fall in taking it — the ideal end of a Russian soldier ! to fail in 
taking it — ah ! that would be impossible for me if I lived. This 
hour I had dreamt of for years without daring to hope for it. The 
sacred city in the hollow of my hand — of my hand. Reserved for 
me ! ” And then he sang loudly, — 

“To dear Russia's standard gather, 

Sons from near and far ; 

Yes, we hail thee, Ruler, Father, 

We are thine, O Czar.” 

And then he changed to the chorus of the national hymn, — 

“ Great is our Czar in peace, 

And greater still in war. 

Oh, may he be lord in both, 

Long live the Czar.” 

“Most musical, most melancholy,” laugned McGahan, as he 
limped along, for, like his servant, he had been lamed. “ Ah, 
general, if you could not fight better than you sing, it would not 
be well for holy Russia.” 

“ Come, old comrade, and cheer me up,” said Skobeleff ; “ I am 
not wont, as you v/ill remember, to be sad on the eve of a fight, 
but to-night I have a foreboding of evil. And yet, think of it, I, 
captain of Cossacks, the harum-scarum of Khiva, the wild colonel 
who was too imprudent to be trusted, the unattached one as we 
crossed the Danube, I — ” and here he slapped the correspondent 
on the shoulder and looked earnestly into his face — “ I, the 
Carlist free-lance, the ne’er-do-well, the officer who was not good 
enough for the Imperial Guard, I to have the glory of capturing 
Constantinople ! My eyes play the woman as I think of it.” 

McGahan said laughingly, “ Vive la guerre ! Better, they say in 
Ireland, to be born lucky than rich.” 

“ We cannot fail in the morning, think you ? ” 

“In your dictionary there is no such word.” 

“Oh, I don’t know. We did not succeed in the three days* 


64 


Camps and Quarters, 

fighting when I lost half my dear division, and when the tipsy 
doctor told me we had. left our best soldiers behind and those who 
were coming back were mainly skulkers — it was true, McGahan. 
Ah, I see that drunken doctor again pointing to the works in front 
of Krishin, where I left my hundred and sixty officers and eight 
thousand poor fellows/* 

“ But this will be child*s play in comparison with the work on 
the Green Hills. See, here comes Pat. Compose yourself. Well, 
Pat, what have you there ? Limping still, I see.’* 

“ Oh to the devil wid it for an ancle, and indeed it’s not much 
use to me. But the poor baste. Sure he’s gone where the poor 
bastes go ; and now, general, you haven’t a white horse for to- 
morrow’s fight at all at all, and the men will not know you without 
your poor Pacha. But I tould your servant to put out a white 
uniform for you, and perhaps that will do as well.” 

“ Thank you, Pat,” said the general ; “ but what have you got in 
the basket ? ” 

“ Oh, just a morsel to ate and a sup to drink. Way down in 
the village beyant, there’s an ould Armenian wid as purty a 
colleen for a daughter as yed see in a day’s walk or a month o’ 
Sundays, and shure some iv the liftinants an’ captains had found 
out its a sort iv publican he is ; and bedad when he saw a bit of 
silver his eyes sparkled like an ould-clothes man’s behind Patrick’s 
Cathedral, when he handles the money iv a slip iv a boy fresh from 
the cattle-market ; and there was nothin’ in the house too good 
for me nor out iv it, an’ I got ye a bit iv a chicken and some bread 
and cake, and a dhrop, an’ Captain Greene’s servant has got a 
bottle iv champagne itself, and if ye will stay out this could night 
we’ll thry and make ye comfortable anyhow.” 

Greene here joined them, and they sat down to supper, when 
Muller arrived. 

“ Any news, good Muller } ” asked the general. 

“ Nothing, Excellency ; but your telegraph clerk has been 
killing time by a conversation with the Adrianople clerk, and the 
rumour goes there that the Turks will not agree to our conditions, 
and that the special embassy returns to-night.” 

“ Oh, thank you, Muller, that is good news indeed. But what 
terms do they wish to impose upon the Turk ? ” 

“ I have no official information. Excellency, but the clerk thinks 
they wish the Turks to give up their works as a preliminary.” 

“ That they will never do,” said Skobeleff ; “ that indeed would 
be an end to everything, even to my hopes. And to ask a 
soldier like Moukhtar Pacha to give up the lines he has made so 
strong ! Oh, no ! The Grand Duke can never have asked that.” 

“ It will be all the same in twenty-four hours,” cried Greene ; 
“ except for a few thousand Russians and a few more thousand 
Turks who will never see the sun set again.” 

“ But as the sweet English song says,” replied the general, “ oh, 


AcJmut^s Treason, 


65 

the difference to me ! And to poor Moukhtar Pacha. When it 
is all over, he will wish he had never left the* family silk-factory. 
Ah ! I’m afraid that sounds like a sneer. But he’s a noble man 
and a fine soldier ; a nobler and finer soldier than, Osman because 
he is intellectual, and not what you English and Americans call a 
mere bulldog.” 

Here an orderly brought a telegram from an Adrianople 
colleague for McGahan, who read it aloud : 

“ Arranged for wire after fight to-morrow. Negotiations broken 
down.” 

“ Hurrah I Hurrah ! ” cried Skobeleff, jumping up, — 

“ Long live the Emperor, 

Long live the Czar.” 

“ Here’s another telegram. What’s this ? * To General Skobe- 

leff, by order of his Imperial Highness, the Commander-in-Chief. 
If perfectly prepared, you will attack at or before dawn, with the 
i6th and 30th Divisions, the 3rd and 4th Rifle Brigades, and the ist 
Cavalry Division. General Radetsky is moving up in support, but 
without waiting for him, if your corps is ready, select the weakest 
point of the Ottoman line and attack it with energy. Signed, Zotoff, 
Lieutenant-General, Chief of the Staff.’ Now, indeed, is my good 
fortune at its height. Oh, my mother, happy mother, whose son 
will take Constantinople ! Ah, Greene, pardon my weakness. 
Your Anglo-Saxon mothers are not what ours are ! Colonel 
Muller, you have your orders ? ” 

“ They are gone, general ; all is ready.’* 

“ Then good night. I will here snatch a little rest, and, good 
Muller, and good Greene, and my old comrade McGahan, you 
must try to sleep in your quarters. Pat will remain with 
me. 

“Hurroo!” shouted Pat; ** thank ye kindly, giniral ; this is a 
great day for ould Ireland intirely. Now, giniral, just a wee dhrop 
to keep the cold out ! ” 

“ Thank you, Pat ! Here’s to the glory of Holy Russia. To- 
morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow ! What is it Shakespeare 
says of dusky death ? Oh yes, ‘ Death and his brother sleep ! ’ ” 

^ ^ Hi ^ ^ 

On the lines dominating the oak scrub marshes of the Nose ot 
Thrace walked Moukhtar Pacha that same night, wearing a flow- 
ing mantle of sables, and whisking a gold-headed cane as though 
he were annoyed. A good camp fire threw his short and sturdy 
figure into relief as he turned about and said, — 

“ They will attack in the morning, and I am without the least 
instructions. My new men have not arrived, but I can hold my 
own. Osman Effendi, see if there is nothing doing in the tele- 
graph tent. . . . Nothing ? — then telegraph to the Seraskierate, 
and say, ‘ The Russians are getting into position for the attack at 

F 


66 


Camps and Q.uarters. 

dawn. I have not enough men. They must send Suleiman’s men 
up at once, and every available man to the centre of my line.’ 
Strange that I do not hear what Achmet is doing — I more and more 
distrust that man. Four days now, and no word from him of any 
sort. Osman Effendi, the division facing us is the i6th, is it 
not ? ” 

“ So the peasant said,” was the reply. 

“ Ah, that is General Skobeleft’s. It will be warm work at day- 
light, Cousin Osman ! ” 

Here an officer came up and saluted Osman, who said to 
Moukhtar, — 

“ Excellency, an aide de camp from Achmet Pacha has arrived 
with a Russian flag of truce, by the road through Silivri, having 
come by train as far as Tchorlu. He has orders to communicate 
with no one till he reaches his Majesty, and says he comes for 
further instructions. He desires to reach Yildiz Kiosk to- 
night.” 

After musing, Moukhtar replied, — 

“ He must pass, and give him fresh horses. Did he refuse to see 
me?” 

“ Absolutely, your Excellency.” 

“ Hem ! very well ... I do not like this at all, and if negotia- 
tions are going on and he comes for fresh instructions, why this 
movement of the Muscovs ? Osman Effendi, despatch a messen- 
ger. Tell Baker Pacha to look to his outposts, and if he feels any 
further Russian movements to-night, he should give them a few 
shells for light, as there is no moon. One should receive visitors 
warmly and brilliantly.” 

The Mushir now lit a cigarette and placed it in his six-inch amber 
tube, then resumed his stroll. An orderly then came to him with 
a despatch. 

“ Ha ! from our good English Baker. He does not go to sleep. 
With a few like him we should have had another story to tell in 
Armenia. Oh for an English c. Vision, or even an English brigade 
to-night.” 

He said this while he was unsealing the despatch and the orderly 
was bringing a camp lantern. “ How ! ‘ Russians assembling in 
force between Tchorlu and Serai. Seem to be reinforced from 
direction of Rodosto. Moving towards Black Sea, but gradually 
inclining along railway. Have placed a battery there, and myself 
will hold Mount Elias. Peasant says they have fortified three 
farms, and the outposts report movement from their right through- 
out night. In my judgment they attack before day. Can you 
spare me two battalions more ? ’ Osman Effendi, bring the map 
and take my orders in writing. The whole line will stand to arms 
by half-battalions every hour. At first sound of gun, or rocket, or 
small arms, every man to his post, and make a last stand for Allah, 
the Prophet and the Kaliph. And then. Cousin Osman, you and 


Achmet^s Treason. 


67 

I will rest by turns for half an hour apiece, under shelter of this 
good gun. I will take my round while you telegraph that order 
along the line.” 

Then he looked at his watch and continued, — 

“ It is but two hours till daybreak.” 

Osman returned, and the Mushir asked,— 

“No news, Osman, from his Majesty or Stamboul? ” 

“None, Excellency.” 

“ Ah ! we shall have to send them some soon if I am not mis- 
taken. Look ! what is that ? a rocket followed by a gun.” 

He jumped on the parapet and threw open his fur coat, dis- 
playing on the breast of his patrol jacket a diamond star. 

“ Ah, Excellency,” cried Osman, “ that shows even in the fire- 
light, it may draw fire when it is a little lighter.” 

“My sovereign gave it to me for beating the Russians last 
August,” Moukhtar replied, “as I shall to-day. . . . Just becoming 
day. The rascals press forward very boldly.” 

“ Your Excellency’s eyes are very good, and the glass General 
Kemball gave you beyond Kars is a wonderful glass. But have 
you seen no movement yonder, as though a flag of truce were being 
prepared } With the English glass I can see less than without it, 
but I may deceive myself.” 

“Yes, indeed; I can see a white flag. And, lo ! they cease 
firing.” 

“ And we ? 

“Not till they withdraw their columns and skirmishers. It may 
be a trick, but the Muscov will not trick me.” 

“ They will perhaps scarcely withdraw their columns if they have 
only a communication to make from Adrianople.” 

“ Ah ! I suspect Achmet,” said Moukhtar for sole reply. 

“ See, our line slackens fire also,” continued the aide-de-camp ; 
and their first line takes cover. The party with the white flag 
must be advancing by that dip in the ground.” 

“ Give the order to cease firing generally, but let every gun and 
every rifle be loaded and every bayonet fixed. Send the engineers 
to the mines, and let the bearer of the white flag be blindfolded. 
Meet him yourself, good Osman, and bring him hither. Let no 
communication pass save with yourself till he is here. His party 
must remain beyond the lines . . . Ha, Monsieur de Fleet, my old 
comrade in starvation and fighting, you are in time to see the end 
of a tiagedy — or a farce.” 

“ I have hurried up from your quarters. Excellency,” said the 
correspondent, “ expecting an attack this morning, but your good 
camp-commandant was unwilling I should expose myself at the 
front ; and I had to give him the slip. I have therefore been 
delayed till I have lost the beginning. But tell me, Mushir, why 
the firing has already ceased, and why you have not that elation I 
have so often seen in battle on your face ? ” 

F 2 


68 


Camps and Quarters. 

“ Ah, De Fleet, I fear we are betrayed. Having opened the ball, 
they stop the music and send me a white flag.” 

“ A white flag ! What can it mean — and betrayed, you say, 
betrayed by whom 

“Not this time by a drunken ferik, but 1 fear by a civilian, 
Achmet Pacha.” 

“ Ha ! the Commissioner ? 

“ Even so : I fear I know not what.^' 

“These works could never be taken ! And, Excellency, I passed 
two brigades of reinforcements on my way up.” 

“ Alas ! perhaps too late ; the works can never be taken, but 
what if they are surrendered ? See ! here comes Cousin Osman, 
conducting the bearer of the flag of truce.” 

He came, that brave young Russian, who was first over the 
parapet at Plevna, as calm as though he were going to risk an 
imperial at rouge et noir^ though surrounded by a guard with fixed 
bayonets. 

“ You are in the presence of his Excellency,” said Osman. 

“ I have the honour to address his Excellency Ghazi Moukhtar 
Pacha, commanding the Ottoman forces } ” queried Paskewitch. 

“ I am Moukhtar Pacha ; what is your wish ? ” 

“ Light, Excellency.” 

“ It is but usual, yet so much depends upon a skilled eye seeing 
no more than is necessary that — ” 

“ Your Excellency need not be afraid of anything I can see or 
say, for here ” (and he drew a paper from his breast) “ is a plan of 
your works in detail, forwarded to General Skobeleff from Adrian- 
ople.” 

“ I feared the worst, sir. Osman, remove the bandage. And 
now, sir ? ” 

“ I have the orders of General Skobeleff, Excellency, to express 
to you, as from one soldier to another, his profound respect and 
deepest sympathy.” 

“ Sympathy, sir ? This is trifling.” 

“ General Skobeleff, Marshal, is before all things desirous you 
should understand he, as much as yourself, doubtless, regrets that 
the day is not to be decided by the fortune of war on the occasion 
of your first meeting in the field.” 

“ Ah, yes ; he is a brave soldier — but your message, sir, your 
message ! ” 

“ By the orders of General Skobeleff, Marshal, I demand the 
surrender of these works without the firing of another shot. One 
more shot, and your Excellency will be held personally respon- 
sible!” 

“ By whom, pray ? ” 

“ Marshal, an armistice was concluded at Adrianople at midnight 
by the Commissioner of his Majesty the Sultan.” 

“ Ha 1 then you come to announce to me a deep-laid Muscov 


Achmefs Treason. 69 

plot, and that I am to throw open, on your mere word, the road to 
Stamboul for the Russians ? ” 

“ Excellency ! General Skobeleff is well aware that this cannot 
be within your knowledge, or you would not have opened fire. 
Indeed when he began his movement this morning he was not 
himself aware of it.” 

“ Will you please to recount the terms of the surrender ? ” 

“That you evacuate these works immediately, leaving in them 
your heavy artillery ; that a neutral zone be established ; your 
ships of war withdrawn from our flanks to the Bosphorus ; and 
that your Excellency forthwith nominates commissioners to fix the 
limits of the neutral zone.” 

“ Ah, old comrade,” said the Mushir to the correspondent by his 
side, “ this is cruel, cruel, cruel ! Even worse than I conceived. 
Stamboul will be then at their mercy, the mercy of northern 
wolves. ... You have evidence of this?” he added to Paske- 
vitch. 

“General Skobeleff, Excellency, has received these orders by 
telegraph from his Imperial Highness.” 

“ But I am not under your Grand Duke’s orders — not yet ! ” 

“General Skobeleff is willing that you should refer to your 
sovereign, and for that purpose to grant a delay of an hour in 
which you may telegraph.” 

“ Be it so : if in one hour I have no instructions, I will announce 
my intention to defend these lines by one gun from this redoubt. 
If the works are to be surrendered, I will haul down the flag on 
yonder staff. Farewell, sir.” 

“ Shall I blindfold him. Excellency ? ” asked Osman. 

“Nay, Osman, it hardly matters now. Sir, will you have a 
cigarette ? ” And then Paskevitch and Osman retired together. 

“Ah, my dear De Fleet,” continued the Mushir, “I could not 
be deceived in Achmet Pacha. I read traitor in the furtive glances 
of his eye, and saw perfidy in the twitching muscles of his face.” 
Then he took out his tablets and wrote. 

“ Send this telegram, De Fleet, both to the Seraskierate and to 
his Majesty. In one hour we shall know all. One hour 1 One 
poor hour ! Thus, thus to be betrayed when I could beat back 
these Russian hordes as yonder rocks have defied for centuries 
the heaviest waves of the Euxine. Were every Russian south 
of the Danube multiplied by a dozen, they should not pass these 
lines! But Osman returns! There can be no answer yet, 
surely?” 

“Your Excellency, all is lost,” said Osman. 

Moukhtar took a paper from his cousin’s hand, and reading it, 
sighed, — 

“ All is indeed lost ! ” 

“All is lost,” put in the correspondent, “except honour, your 
honour.” 


70 


Camps and Quarters, 

“Speak not of my honour!** cried the Mushir ; “think of my 
betrayed country. Betrayed ! And by a civilian who was born a 
traitor. Better the midwife had strangled him. Betrayed ! Haul 
down that flag ! ** 

^ ^ 4c H: 4: ^ 

On the low rolling hills to the east of San Stefano, on the most 
memorable day but one in the year 1878, were to be seen in one 
group General Skobeleff, two English officers in mufti, Lieut, 
now Capt. Greene, McGahan, De Fleet, Osman Bey, and Captain 
Paskevitch, with, .to the westward, the Imperial Guard in column, 
and to the east again the 4th Russian Army Corps. 

“ Well, but what could Melikoff* have been thinking of,’* said 
Skobeleff to De Fleet, “ to allow Moukhtar thus to circumvent 
him?” 

“ General, if it is a conundrum, I give it up,** answered the 
correspondent; “I was not in the secrets of Russian generals 
then.” 

“ And of what Russian general’s secrets are you now master ? ** 

“ If I did not know that your frankness always covers profound 
strategy, I should say yours, General Skobeleff.” 

“ What, I crafty ? Do you hear that, McGahan ? I who have 
always been so above-board with you.** 

“ Always, General,*’ assented McGahan, “ especially when I had 
to support your reports.” 

“ And yet you have often told me not to wear my heart so much 
upon my sleeve. But, my dt ar De Fleet, when did I deceive you 
in the month we have been acquainted ?” 

“You have never deceived me, General. The proverbial grain 
of salt has ever been present where your Excellency has confided 
in a Turcophile like myself.” 

“He means to say,” bluntly put in McGahan, “ that ho never 
listened to more than one-half of what you said, and did not always 
credit that.** 

“ I have not found in Moukhtar*s friend any inability to express 
what he means,*’ was the GeneraFs response, with some frigidity. 

“ Oh, I am again sat upon, crushed ; but I will have my revenge 
when I write my great history of the war, and can tell the world to 
whose advice General Skobeleff owed all his victories,” laughed 
McGahan. 

“ Dear Mr. de Fleet,** said the General, “ perhaps you do not 
know what a farceur your confrere is.” 

“ And what a gallant model your confrere follows in that respect, 
dear De Fleet.’* 

“ I have no doubt,** the latter replied, “ that if the truth were 
known, it was McGahan who won all the victories, and General 
Skobeleff who wrote the accounts of them. But here comes the 
invaluable Pat.” 

“ Well, Pat, any news ? ** asked Skobeleff. 


Achmefs Treason, 




“Iv ye plaze, Gineral, I thought ye’d like to know that they’re 
goin’ to dhraw swoords on one another beyant there, they can’t 
agree.” 

“ Then we shall have time to have some luncheon,” said Sko- 
oeleff, 

“ But,” answered Pat, “ look, Gineral ! there’s a stir down there 
by the shore. And that’s a cheer ! Shure the pace is signed. 
See, the Gran’ Duke raises his cap and spakes to his officers. 
Look, the men take off cap and hilmet and raise them on their 
bagginets and throw them into the air. Why, the cheer is taken 
up along the lines, and there goes the gun that comminces 
the salute, and now your min, Gineral, catch up the cheer, 
an’ ...” 

“Osman Effendi,” said Skobeleff, with tears running down his 
fair and manly cheeks, and forming pearls on his blond whiskers, 
“ I pray you, on behalf of your gallant General, to give me your 
hand. We are friends once more, we, servants of the Emperor and 
the Sultan. The fight is over, and we have learnt to respect each 
other. De P'leet, when you return to Stamboul, will you assure 
Moukhtar Pacha of my profound respect ? I feel more humiliation 
at the shame which a civilian official has endeavoured to put upon 
him than I feel satisfaction at the close of our campaign. It is the 
chief desire of my life, at this moment, to assure him that he has 
been badly treated, but not by Russian soldiers, and that such men 
as he is may yet be the salvation of Turkey.” Here he turned to 
the English officers : “ Gentlemen, you also, who have served with 
Moukhtar Pacha, pray confirm to him what I have said, and what 
I say from my heart. Pat, some champagne as soon as it can be 
brought.” 

“ Deed and shure I thought your honner would be wantin’ some 
iv that same dhrink, and so I brought all there was lift.” 

“ Gentlemen all,” cried Skobeleff, “ I drink to the friendship of 
Russia, Turkey, and England, a natural triple alliance. Osman 
Effendi, I drink to the health of Moukhtar Pacha. McGahan and 
De Fleet, Captain Sword drinks to the health of his best friend. 
Captain Pen. Now, gentlemen, welcome when you will to the 
headquarters of the Fourth Army Corps, and to my tent or my 
home, wherever I may be. After all, however, our success has a 
bitter drop in it. Bulgaria is freed, but for that matter, had I known 
how ungrateful the Bulgars are, I would never have wet my foot 
in the Danube. And we have not Constantinople ! Yet the time 
will come. The prize will fall into another’s hands. It was not 
for me — not for me, mother darling ! not for me ! ” 

And the dashing leader covered his once more teeming eyes with 
his thin brown hand. 


72 


Camps and Quarters. 


Presently they got talking about Jim Payne, of the Lancers, 
whose name had been in the Gazette a week before. “ He was a 
nice young felloiv,^’ the one they called Archie said. “ Don’t you 
remember, George, he was gallopper to Baker in the Salisbury 
manoeuvres ; he got among a betting lot, I hear, and has gone to 
awful grief.^’ If there was one point about these men that dis- 
gusted me more than another, it was the way in which they pre- 
tended to know pretty near every man in the Army. You could 
not mention a name but they were all ready to swear that they 
knew him/ One fellow would have dined at mess with him 
in India, another would have drunk whisky and water with 
him in his tent at the Cape, or in India, or somewhere, and 
the third would have run against him at Aldershot, or at 
one of the Autumn manoeuvres. However, they were right 
enough about Jim Payne, for he happens to be a cousin of 
one of our fellows; and I have heard him say Jim was a deal 
too fond of cards. I would have laid a dinner that this would start 
one of them off with a story, and sure enough it did. “ It is 
astonishing,” he said, “ what a lot of men in the Army come to 
grief over gambling in one form or another. I never knew but one 
man who really made a good thing out of it, and that was in a 
very curious way,’* 



tTurning tbe tables. 

There was no brighter young fellow in the Eighty than Tony 

Russell. Russell wasn’t his name, but, as he is alive now, and 
high on the list of retired Lieutenant-generals, it is just as well 
not to mention what his right name was, as he mightn’t like the 
story he told me one night, when I was sitting in his tent after he 
had come off duty in the trenches before Sebastopol, being generally 
known. His father a clergyman, managed to send Tony — who 
was an only son — to Harrow, and had purchased his commission ; 
but that was almost all he could do for him, and when he was start- 
ing to join his regiment, he gave him his blessing, and told him that 
he must shift for himself in future, for that he had had all he could 
spare him, and that henceforth all the savings he could make 
would go to the girls. So if Tony got into a scrape, he must get 
out of it as best he could, for there would be no use whatever 
in sending tradesmen’s bills to the parsonage, as not a penny 
would be forthcoming to pay them. Tony was quite content ; 
he had set his mind on being a soldier, and knew that his father 
had had no little difficulty in finding the money for his edu- 
cation, and for the price of the commission, and that the whole 
family had been pinched pretty closely for some years, in order 
that the necessary funds should be forthcoming. 

So he promised with the sincere intention of keeping his word, 
that he would live on his pay. He tried hard to do so, and 
succeeded better than most men ; but it is a difficult thing to manage, 
especially when one is a popular man in the regiment, and that 
Tony soon became. He was full of fun and high spirits, had learnt 
to play cricket at Harrow if he had learnt nothing else, and was the 
mainstay of the regimental team. He could sing a capital song, 
and was ready to take his full share of any fun that was going on. 
So, though he was really economical, took his cup of tea and his 
roll and butter for breakfast in his own quarters, instead of going to 
the mess-room, lunched on bread and cheese and a glass of beer, and 
always turned down his wine-glass when the duke’s allowance of 
wine was exhausted after mess, he found it hard to make ends 
meet, and while he kept pretty straight in all other matters, his 
tailor’s bills mounted up steadily. 

He did full justice to the patience of this unfortunate man ; but, 



74 


Cmtps and Quarters, 

naturally, what with uniforms and mufti, the bills in the course of 
eight years amounted to a considerable total, and although Tony’s 
monthly pay sufficed to meet all other demands, he had never, from 
the day he entered the regiment, been able to lay by anything 
towards paying off the steadily increasing amount against him. 
For the first four years the tailor had furnished the clothes without 
a question ; after that, the letters sent in with the accounts became 
first urgent, and then peremptory, and for the last two years there 
had been a complete cessation of supplies. 

Had it not been that Tony had a pleasant manner, and every one 
liked him, matters would have proceeded to an extremity long 
before; but he knew the value of personal intercourse, and had 
never shirked presenting himself before his creditor, always making 
a point, whenever he was in town, of dropping into the shop for a 
talk, and even tailors are but men, and have compunctions as to 
proceeding to extremities against a pleasant young fellow who has 
no nonsense about him. Mr. Cutters was convinced that Tony 
would pay if he could, but this conviction was scarcely enough to 
render the situation a satisfactory one. He would have been 
willing to wait still longer, had there been any definite prospect of 
payment ; but Tony himself was always ready to admit he could 
not specify any approximate date at which he would be likely to 
be in a position to discharge even a portion of his account. 

“ It’s no use pressing me to name a time. Cutters, not the slightest 
in the world. When I once get my company, I shall be able to 
put something by and square up. It wonT cost me more to 
live than it does now, and I shall get a good deal better pay, and 
will lay by regularly till I can settle with you.” 

“Yes, sir, I have no doubt you would, though gentlemen don’t 
always, as far as I see, find themselves in funds, even when they get 
their companies ; but, you see, you are only half way up the list of 
lieutenants, and as you tell me that your name won’t be down on 
the purchase list, it may be another five or six years before you 
get your company. Now, you see, sir, I have waited pretty nigh 
six years since you had those first goods of me, and I do think it’s 
about time you gave me something on account.” 

“ It’s more than time. Cutters, I am well aware of that, but, you 
see, you are safe to get it sooner or later ; I don’t owe a penny 
in the world except to you.” 

“Well, sir, I don’t know that that is much consolation,” Mr. 
Cutters said. “ Don’t you think, now, you might get a little money 
from a friend ? ” 

“ I don’t think about it at all. Cutters, I know I couldn’t ; if I 
had a maiden aunt with money, I should have drawn upon her 
long ago, but I haven’t.” 

“Well, sir, you see my account is 150/. now, and though I 
am sorry to refuse you, I must decline to comply with lurther 
orders till I get something on account.” 


75 


Turning the Tables, 

This was two years before the outbreak of the war, and since 
that time, Tony had been forced to get what garments he abso- 
lutely required made by the regimental tailor. He could have 
borrowed money on his commission had he chosen, but in the 
first place, he had promised his father never to borrow money, and in 
the second, he knew that if he once began at that game, he should 
very soon find himself at the end of his tether. But Mr. Cutters 
knew that Tony had this resource behind him, and although he 
had taken no steps against him until the regiment was under 
orders for the East, he then issued a writ against him. Tony 
fortunately escaped service, had been smuggled on board the 
troop-ship at the last moment, and got safely off. 

Naturally, as he had nothing but his pay to live on, and found 
that this hardly sufficed hi n, Tony had fallen in love, and had 
become engaged to a pretty cousin, who, although not absolutely 
impecunious, had but fifty pounds a year, the interest of a legacy 
from a grand-aunt. He was now fourth on the list of lieutenants, 
and in peace time, might have waited for some time for his step ; but 
his prospects were greatly improved by the chances of death vacan- 
cies if the regiment went into action. Two days after the regiment 
landed at Gallipoli, the paymaster of the regiment shot himself. 
He had been a muddler, not often absolutely drunk, but generally 
upon the verge of it, and his accounts were found to be in extreme 
confusion. 

The colonel offered the post to Tony until a fresh paymaster 
should be sent out from England, and Tony accepted it. Figures, 
however, were not in his line, he trusted to the sergeant, and the 
sergeant was a scamp. No doubt he had ruined Tonyas pre- 
decessor, and the mess in which the accounts were when Tony 
took them up, rendered it easy for him to impose upon a young 
hand. Anyhow, after holding the post for two months, Tony, after 
spending two days of agony in balancing his accounts, found him- 
self over a hundred pounds deficient. How it had come about he 
could not say, there were the long rows of figures which he had 
gone through a hundred times, there was the balance against him, 
but where the money had gone he had not the slightest idea. He 
had kept his cash carefully locked up, had vouchers for all his pay- 
ments, and yet there was the deficiency. 

Gallipoli swarmed with gambling-houses. Jews and Greeks 
had come down from Constantinople, fitted up and opened saloons, 
and did a thriving trade. Stringent orders had been issued 
that neither officers nor men should enter any of these houses ; but 
orders are not always obeyed, and no inconsiderable number of 
British officers, both naval and military, had good reason to regret 
that in this case they had not observed them. Tony had 
once or twice, in company with other officers, paid a visit to one or 
other of these establishments, but he had never himself played, and 
had done his best to dissuade his friends from doing so. 


76 


Camps and Quarters. 

‘‘What is the use?” he would say. “ Look at the swarm of ruffians 
who go there ; if you won anything like a large sum, they would 
never let you get out of it, or if you did, you would never get to 
camp alive. Some of those fellows would stab a man for a pound, 
and though they might let you get off with a hundred francs or so, 
trusting that you would come again and lose double as much next 
time, you would never get off with anything like a pot of money. 
Besides, I am sure they don’t play fair. I have noticed they al- 
ways let you win at first, a good big sum, too, sometimes, but it all 
goes before you have done. You may say you can stop when you 
like, and go off with the money when you have won it, but you 
know very well you couldn’t. There have been several rows of this 
sort already, and fellows have been hustled and robbed, and in 
one or two cases got some nasty knife-cuts before they got out. 
These scoundrels know well enough that it is against orders our 
being there, and that we dare not make a complaint.” 

• After dismissing the first idea that occurred to him after making 
the discovery that he was deficient in his balancing, namely, that 
he would follow the example of his predecessor and blow out his 
brains, Tony half resolved to go to his colonel, make a clean breast 
of it, and ask for his advice. 

There was still his commission to borrow on, but what would 
have been an easy transaction at home, v/as not possible here. It 
would take a month before he could write home to his agents and 
receive an answer; besides, this would practically double his 
liabilities, and there would be interest to pay. He had seen other 
men begin with small advances on their commissions, and be forced 
at last to leave the Army. This should certainly be his last resource. 
He was on the way to his colonel’s quarters to lay the whole 
matter before him, when he stopped to speak to a couple of young 
officers who were comparing their experiences of the previous 
evening at the gambling-tables — one had won a hundred and 
fifty francs, the other had lost four hundred. 

When he left them, instead of going on to the colonel’s quarters, 
Tony sauntered back to his own tent. Should he try his luck at 
the tables before he gave matters up ? He had the day before received 
his month’s pay, and after settling his mess accounts, had three 
pounds in hand. It was not much to risk, but then he might have 
a run of good luck. Then his own counsels to others occurred to 
him. Even if he won, they would never let him go out with more 
than a few hundred francs, and that would be of no use to him. 
Still, surely it might be managed somehow. Fellows generally won 
at first, sometimes heavily. If he could but hit on some plan for 
leaving early, it might be managed. In the meantime he would 
not lose more. He knew that he had not been touching the regi- 
mental money, and that he had obtained vouchers for all he paid. 
The sergeant said that he had also taken vouchers for all payments* 
and he had paid away a great deal more than Tony had done himself. 


77 


Turning the Tables, 

Either there was some rascality or other, or the money had been 
taken from the chest. He therefore went across to the paymaster of 
the regiment encamped next to him, and laid the case before him. 

“ Y ou know he said, “ that our last paymaster blew out his brains, 
and that his accounts were in a fearful muddle, and I believe that 
there was a very large deficiency. I think that he was as honest as 
the day, but he was always muddling himself with drink, and left 
pretty well everything to the sergeant. I have had the accounts 
for two months, and I expect be.ore long a fresh man will come 
out and take them over. Now I know I have got vouchers for 
everything I have paid myself, but I have been balancing up, and 
find that there is a considerable deficiency, and I can’t help suspect- 
ing that the sergeant is at the bottom of it, although how he has 
done it I know no more than Adam. I should be awfully obliged 
if you would spare an hour or two to look through the books, and 
tell me if you can see any way in which the money goes.” 

“ I don’t suppose an hour or two will be much good, but I will 
take them in hand,” the paymaster, who was a Scotchman, said. 
“The accounts may be all right enough, and the money just have 
been taken from the chest. However, I will see about it, and in 
the meantime keep your own eyes open, count the money before you 
lock it up,andcount again the first thing in the morning ; but don’t let 
the sergeant see you at it. When you go out in the day-time, do the 
same thing. You will soon find whether there is any deficiency ; if 
there is, the next thing will be to prove who is the thief. I will 
come over after lunch to-morrow and look into the books.” 

Tony felt more comfortable after acting upon the advice given 
him ; but the question of the debt already made weighed upon 
his mind. He again thought of the gambling-tables, and 
at last hit upon a scheme that promised to be successful ; 
but to carry it into effect would, he saw, require a good deal more 
money than he had at his command. There was the chest, and 
there was money, but it was not his to take. For a long time he 
resisted the temptation, but at last yielded to it. “ I am a hundred 
pounds short,” he argued to himself. “ It is clear I shall have to raise 
the money somehow to settle it, and I can raise two hundred 
pounds on my commission as well as one.’^ This was not strictly 
the fact, for the commission of an officer going upon active service 
loses a considerable proportion of its value, for if he is killed, its 
value is lost to him and his heirs. Still it had been worth a thousand 
pounds before there was a talk of war; supposing it had lost 
half its value, or even two-thirds, he could still probably borrow a 
couple of hundred pounds on it. 

He had promised never to borrow, but this was a case of neces- 
sityi The tailor’s bill was nothing, but a deficiency in his accounts 
would mean ruin, and he determined that, at any rate, if at the worst 
he was forced to borrow, he would sell out as soon as the war was 
over settle his liabilities, and go out to Australia or Canada. 


78 


Cafnps and Quarters. 

It was a hard prospect for one whose heart was thoroughly in his 
profession ; but he saw no way out of it, unless the plan he had 
formed should prove successful. There were not a hundred pounds 
in his chest at the time, and if there were, he could not take them 
without the fact being known to his serjeant ; he therefore went 
to the divisional treasury and drew three hundred pounds. Of it 
he placed two hundred only in his chest, stowing the rest away in 
his trunk. 

That evening he went to one of the gambling-houses where the 
play was often high. Taking with him ten pounds, in addition to 
what he had in his purse, he began by playing for small stakes. 
These he won, and continued increasing his stakes until he had 
three or four thousand francs before him. Then luck turned, and 
he rapidly lost the whole of it and the money he had with him. 
On the following night he lost twenty pounds ; the next evening 
when he had won two thousand francs, he rose as if to go, but 
such angry exclamations broke out from the Greeks and Levan- 
tines who were standing round looking on, occasionally betting on 
their own account, that he sat down again and continued to play 
until his winnings and thirty pounds more were exhausted. On 
the following evening, before going to the gambling-house, he went 
round to the Provost Marshal’s tent, and got into conversation with 
one of the sergeants. 

“ Are you on duty this evening ? ” he asked, after a few ques- 
tions. 

“ No, sir. Two of the patrols have just left. Sergeant Brown here 
is just starting with another.” 

“ Thank you, I want to say a word to him,” and turning to 
Sergeant Brown, took him aside. 

“ Sergeant,” he said, “ I can put you in the way of earning a ten- 
pound note if you are disposed.” 

“ I have no objection to that, sir, if it’s in the way of duty.” 

‘^It is, sergeant. You know there are strict orders against any 
one entering these gambling-houses } ” 

The sergeant smiled. 

“ Yes, I know, sir, but I don’t think, if I may say so, that they 
are obeyed, not to say strictly. Somehow or other we are not 
lucky in finding any one there when we enter.” 

“ I don’t think you enter very often, sergeant.” 

“Not very often, sir,” and again the sergeant smiled slightly, 
for it was generally supposed that the keepers of these houses paid 
liberal fees to the provost-sergeants to keep their eyes discreetly 
closed. 

“ Well, sergeant, what I want is this : I have been horribly 
swindled in one of these dens — it is kept by a Greek named 
Zaptos.” 

“ I know the place, sir.” 

“Well, I want to get square with them, and I will give you a 


79 


Tttrning the Tables, 

ten-pound note If you will come in punctually at half-past ten this 
evening, with two of your men, and arrest me for disobeying the 
orders. Never mind what I say, you insist on taking me 

“ All right, sir, I will do that readily enough, it’s just a matter 
of duty.” 

“ Be sure and be punctual to the time.” 

“ I will be there, sir, never fear.” 

After leaving the sergeant, Tony proceeded to the gambling- 
house. He had made up a roll of paper to represent bank-notes, 
and put it in his pocket-book, wrapping round it the eight five- 
pound notes that still remained out of the hundred. On taking his 
seat at the table, he took out his pocket-book, drew two five-pound 
notes from the roll, and passed them across to the Greek who 
acted as croupier. As he did so, he noticed a significant glance 
exchanged between that worthy and some of the others ; — they 
thought, as he intended they should think, that having lost sixty 
pounds on the three previous evenings, he had come in, deter- 
mined to play heavily to recover them. 

He began with great caution, only staking a pound at a time 
with varying success. After half an hour’s play, he had lost ten 
pounds. He drew out twenty more, staked a five-pound note and 
won it, and then, as if excited at his success, went on increasing the 
stakes rapidly. As he had expected, he was now allowed to win, 
and as in addition to the advantages that their unfair play gave him, 
he had really a wonderful run of luck ! in a short time a large 
pile of money accumulated before him. He glanced at his watch, 
it wanted but five minutes to the half-hour. He lost a heavy 
stake, and then, as if rendered a little cautious, put on one for half 
the amount, calling at the .same time for another bottle of cham- 
pagne. 

Three times in succession he won ; the croupier looked a little 
anxious, and an angry growl broke from three or four of the men 
standing behind Tony’s chair, but he saw the croupier sign to them 
to be quiet, knowing perfectly well that in time, as the champagne 
did its work, he would win back not only the pile of money, 
but the roll of notes in the pocket-book. Suddenly there was a 
movement among the group around the table, and a moment later, 
the provost- sergeant with two of his men came up to Tony. 

“ I am sorry, sir,” he said, saluting, “ to have to do my duty, 
but you know the orders are strict against officers entering these 
places, and I must arrest you.” 

“Oh, nonsense, sergeant,” Tony said, “ that’s ridiculous. You 
know very well it’s constantly done, and no one is interfered with. 
Here, my man,” and he held out four hundred-franc notes, “here 
are two hundred-franc notes for yourself, and a hundred for each of 
your men ; now march away, and leave me to myself.” 

“ I can’t do that, sir,” the sergeant said sternly, “ and it will 


So 


Camps and Quarters, 


be my duty to report your having attempted to bribe me to the 
provost major. You must come along, sir, at once.^^ 

Tony shrugged his shoulders, swept the pile of money and 
notes into his pockets, and stood up. 

“You must put off your revenge until to-morrow,” he said care- 
lessly to the croupier. 

The men placed themselves one on each side of him, the 
sergeant following closely behind. A hubbub of voices broke out, 
and knives were drawn. The croupier hesitated a moment. The 
loss was an extremely heavy one, but at the same time an 
attack upon a military guard was a serious affair. One man or 
even two might be put out of the way, but here were four, for the 
officer would doubtless support his guard if he were attacked. 
They were armed and prepared, and one or more would certainly be 
able to fight their way out and give the alarm ; in that case the 
guard would be up in a minute or two, and even if he escaped 
serious punishment, the establishment would be broken up, and a 
business that had proved highly profitable summarily put a stop 
to ; besides, no doubt the Englishman would return another day. 
Men seldom leave off playing when they are successful, and a few 
nights at most would see all the money back again. It was best 
to let them go quietly. So he waved his hand. The tumult sub- 
sided, and the provost- sergeant and his party made their way out 
in the open air. Several of the men came out and followed at a 
distance. 

“ You must take me into the guard-tent, sergeant. If I were 
to try and make my way back now to the regiment, I should get my 
throat cut long before I got there.” 

Accordingly they proceeded to the guard-tent. 

“ What will you do now, sir ? ” the sergeant asked as he entered 
after him. 

“ In the first place, sergeant, here are that four hundred francs I 
offered you in there. Keep that for yourself, and here are two 
hundred for each of your men. Now the only plan that I can .see is 
for you to call your two men in. I will change my cloak for one 
of their great-coats and take his musket, then he shall remain here, 
and I will go with you and the others out on patrol. We can march 
about the streets for some time, and then go up to the camp.s. As 
we pass our tents, I can slip in. They will be watching the tent, and 
there is no fear of their following us. Of course you will put a 
sentry over the tent. I will send down my servant the first thing in 
the morning with your man's great coat and musket. Of course you 
will call off the sentry early in the morning and will make no report 
of having taken a prisoner. I daresay you will pick up a drunken 
man or two in the course of the night, and put them in the tent. At 
any rate, those Greeks need never know how it has been managed." 

“ Yes, I think it will work very well that way, sir. I fancy you 
must have done the Greeks pretty hotly." 


Turning the Tables, 8i 

“ That I have, sergeant, I have won back what I lost and a good 
deal more. It^s the scoundrel’s game to let you win always at first ; 
but they won’t let you go out of the place with it. I thought 
that there was going to be a shindy, even with you three with me.” 

“ I thought so at first, sir, but they knew better. If they had 
pitched into us, it would have cost some of them their lives ; a score 
of them would have got five dozen a-piece in the morning, and the 
place would have been shut up. But I certainly thought for a 
moment we were in for a fight. Well I am glad you have paid 
them out in their own coin, sir. They do a lot of harm, those 
places, and I know five or six sergeants myself who have come to 
grief over them.^’ 

Tony’s plan was carried out ; in a few minutes he started 
as one of the sergeant’s patrol, and an hour and a half later, slipped 
into his tent. As soon as he had struck a light, he emptied his 
pockets on to the bed, and found that he had won forty-two thousand 
francs, or over seventeen hundred pounds. 

It need hardly be said that this was Tony Russell’s first and last 
experience of gambling. The deficiency in his accounts was made 
up next morning. He then went over to the Divisional Paymaster, 
and handing him the rest, obtained an order, which he despatched 
to his agents at home, and by the same post sent off a cheque to 
his long-suffering tailor for the amount of his bill. The pay- 
sergeant was two days later detected in theft, and a large sum was 
found hidden in his tent. Some of the marked money was in it, 
and the amount Tony had paid in was replaced, and the sergeant 
tried and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, and to be dismissed 
the army. 

Soon afterwards, the army went up to Varna, and there the cholera 
very shortly created several vacancies above Tony ; the Alma and 
Inkerman, and the long winter in the trenches still farther cleared 
away the list, and Tony was junior major of his regiment when he 
returned home at the end of the campaign. Two months later, I 
saw in the papers that he had married his cousin. 

It was a clever move, wasn’t it } and I have always said that 
Tony Russell was the one man I know who has been a really 
successful gambler. 



G 


82 


Camps and Quarters^ 


Now I own this was a good story, and I consider that my putting 
it in shows that I only want to do the fair thing, because I might very 
well have left it out, and have chosen one of the others Lucy wrote 
down. There’s no denying that was a story that might interest any 
fellow, and it was a first-rate dodge to do those Greeks. I made 
a note of it in my pocket-book the same night. It may come in 
useful if one is ever ordered on service in the East. Of course I 
said honestly that I did think that it was a good story, and then 
Lucy, to my surprise, said she did not consider that it was quite an 
honourable way of making money. I pointed out to her that if a 
fellow wants to leg you, and you can put him in a hole, it is 
perfectly legitirr ate to do so, and was the sort of thing every fellow 
would do if he had a chance, to which she replied, “ I am afraid 
that the standard of turf morality differs from that among 
people in general. It does not seem to me that because a man 
wishes to cheat you, you are justified in cheating him. You are 
right to prevent yourself from being cheated, but that is an al- 
together different thing from cheating him.” However, I am bound 
to say the other men rather took my part, and said that in dealing 
with knaves, it was necessary sometimes to fight them with their 
own weapons ; but Lucy was not, I could see, quite satisfied, and a 
minute later changed the subject by asking them if they were fond 
of yachting. What put the idea in her head I am sure I do not 
know ; but I foresaw at once what would come of it. You could not 
start a fresh subject but they were down upon it, and scarcely were 
the words out of her lips, when one of them said, “ I heard 
rather a romantic story about the launch of a yacht a few seasons 
ago at Gosport. I thought at the time of working it up into a 
magazine story.” I had no doubt, in my own mind, that he had 
worked it up, or he would never have told it in the way he did. 


Zbc Buflbtng of tbe l^acbt 


“Is Miss Murray in ?” 

“ No, sir, she’s gone for a walk on Southsea Common.” 

“ Has she been long gone out ?” 

“ She said she would be back at five o’clock, sir.” 

Mary Jane did not give a direct answer to the question put to 
her. After the manner of British housemaids, she habitually 
either amplified or evaded. Not that there was the slightest 
reason for evasion in this case. She knew well enough that 
Alfred Grayling was paying his addresses to her young mistress, 
Miss Rose Murray, and paying them with the entire approbation 
of her master, John Murray, yacht-builder at Gosport, and burgess of 
Portsmouth. She did not think much of Mr. Alfred Grayling, this 
housemaid. “ He has too much of a scowl for me,” she would say 
to the cook or to the grocer’s young man with whom she was 
“ keeping company.” Alfred Grayling did not care what Mary 
Jane thought. A word from him to John Murray would clear the 
house of one Mary Jane after another, as fast as the Registry Office 
could supply them. 

“ Well, I’ll try and find her ; if not. I’ll come back about five.” 

He turned from Lion Terrace past the Cambridge Barracks and 
down the High Street of Portsmouth, which keeps in all respects, 
save the tramway, very much the same old-fashioned appearance 
which it presented when Captain Marryat was writing “ Midship- 
man Easy” in the still unchanged George Hotel. When he got 
to the George, he found in its ample portal a friend who was the 
buck of the Hants Yeomanry Cavalry — Philip Stanton, the son of 
a dealer in ship’s stores, but in dress and demeanour always 
affecting the young squire, with his tight trousers, his cut-away 
coat, his deer-stalker hat, his horseshoe pin, his tan gloves, 
generally his spurs, and always his hunting-crop day and night, 
winter and summer, some people said sleeping or waking. Phil 
Stanton had not “ to work for a living,” his father was wont to say 
proudly. “ I’ll make a gentleman of him. He can ride the best 
horse in Hampshire, and he can marry the prettiest girl too, if 
he’s a mind to. I’ve got enough for both of them.” Phil’s 
education as a gentleman seemed to lead him much into the 

G 2 


84 


Camps and Qiiarte7's. 


company of flashy barmaids — not at the George, oh dear no, it 
was too staid a house for that, but lower down the street. Despite 
his commission in the Yeomany corps, it did not lead him to 
associate much with the better class folk of the neighbourhood. 
He was not wont to patronize the hunting-field, either with the 
Goodwood or the Hambledon pack, though once in a way he 
would show at a meet of the Petworths, and now and again he 
would join the harriers over the Downs, and in the weald beyond 
Portsdown Hill. But he was frequently equipped in all the 
panoply of the field in the mornings on Southsea Common, and 
the nursemaids would say to one another, or the children, “ Why 
there, if there isn’t Mr. Phil Stanton going out with the ^ounds 
again ! ” For the rest he was an amiable nonentity, fond of 
slapping his leg with his crop, talking to a barmaid, standing a 
liquor,” and generally cheaply earning the reputation of being a 
deuce of a fellow. 

Hello, Alfred ; come and have something. I ain’t seen you 
for a week.” 

Don’t mind if I do, Stanton, old boy ; but it must not be at 
the bar, let’s go in the smoking-room.” 

“ What is it to be t ” 

“ Oh, a whisky peg.” As the officers in garrison called brandy 
and soda or whisky and soda a “ peg,” the word had naturally 
slipped into civilian speech in Portsmouth. 

“ I say, Alf, how’s the running with Miss Murray, eh 'i I saw her 
going down past Governor’s Green a while ago, with her Scotch 
terrier, and she blushed like a real rosebud when she met that aide- 
de-camp chap with his retriever, coming past the Naval Club. Is 
there anything in that quarter, hey.? You know who I mean, 
that chap who’s always about with the General — Trevor, I mean.” 

This was incoherent, perhaps ; it was not grammatical ; but it 
was clear enough in the main. Alfred Grayling took it very coolly. 
He said, “ Every girl who is worth her salt likes a bit of flirtation, 
and if the chance comes with a soldier, or a sailor, or a parson, so 
much the better, she thinks. But Captain Trevor is not a marrying 
man, and Rose — Miss Murray — she knows better than to go 
against her father’s wishes.” 

Oh, I daresay. But she meets him nearly every day. Well 
not every day, but several times a week.” 

“ That might be strange in London ; it is hardly strange in 
Portsmouth ; don’t you meet everybody in High Street or on 
Southsea Pier, or E.splanade ? Besides, the old man is going to 
build a yacht for Captain Trevor’s half-brother the baronet, and 
the Captain is to look after it while it is on the stocks. Oh, 
Rose is a good girl, and has an eye to business as well as her 
father.” 

“ What sort of a yacht ? ” 

“ The drawings are not down yet, they’re expected this week ; 


85 


The Building of the Yacht, 

something extra, I believe, in the way of speed. The baronet has 
a notion of trying for the Queen’s Cup, and is going to challenge 
America for it. Well, it’s a more sensible way of getting rid of 
your monev^ than horse-racing — they do sail yachts for what 
they’re worth. And as for the other, it’s just robbery ; robbery of 
the public by owners, robbery of the owners by trainers and 
jockeys, robbery of the jockeys by the bookmakers, and robbery of 
the bookmakers by the ballet-girls.” 

“ How do you make all that out V' 

“ Never mind how I make it out, it is so. Here and there a 
trainer or a jockey makes a pile, but did you ever hear of a 
gentleman winning money in the long run ? No, there’s too 
many with their hands in his pockets. But I must be off.” 

** Which way are you going } ” 

“To Southsea Pier.” 

“ Ah ha ! going to meet Miss Murray, eh ? Well, I’ll take a turn 
with you to the Common. I say. Grayling, old chap, how will the 
old boy cut up ? ” 

“ As she’s an only child, she must get what he has, and he’s been 
buying property these ten years, to my knowledge. Oh, she’ll be 
all right.” 

“ Well, she’s pretty, but she’s not my style ; not dash enough ; 
wouldn’t look half so well in a dogcart on a Sunday, as Polly down 
there at the Ferry Inn.” 

“ Look here, Stanton, I’ll trouble you not to mention Miss 
Murray’s name^in the same sentence with your Pollies, and your 
Totties. Yes, I know you meant no harm, but it is not agreeable. 
By Jupiter, here she comes — is that Trevor with her.? I never saw 
him out of uniform before. I thought this General objected to the 
staff being in mufti this side of Hilsea lines .? Hang it, she seems 
to be enjoying herself.” 

“ Well, Grayling, old man, I’ll slope.” 

“ Good-bye. . . . Good evening, Ro.se.*’ 

“ Good evening, Alfred ; by-the-way, do you know Captain 
Trevor. Mr. Grayling — Captain Trevor.” 

“ They told me you were down here,” said Grayling, with a 
proprietorial air, “ so I came to meet you.” 

“ Captain Trevor has been so kind as to escort me,” was the 
reply, delivered as though one gentleman were escort enough, in 
her opinion, for a pretty girl. “And he has been telling me all 
about the yacht. The plans have come down, and work is to be 
begun at once. Papa will be so pleased, he has been longing to 
begin, for he wants to get her ready early in June. And 1 am to 
lay the first block of the keel. Captain Trevor has asked me. By 
the way, what is she to be called. Captain Trevor ? 

“ Oh, it’s time enough to settle that. My brother does not say. 
But there is the band. Will you not come on the pier .? There’s 
an arrangement from Sullivan’s new opera. Come and hear it” 


86 


Camps and Quarters, 

“ Miss Murray is expected home at five,” said Grayling. 

“ What for ? Who told you that ? ” cried Rose. 

Your maid told me.” 

“ Oh, I said Td be home at about five ; but papa won’t be home 
till after six, so there’s no hurry. What, won’t you come too ? 
Well then — ” this without waiting for an answer, “ come in this 
evening and have some music.” 

It was his dismissal. He felt it even more by the manner, than 
from the words. He raised his hat. Captain Trevor did the same, 
Rose smiled and bowed, and passed the turnstile. Alfred Grayling 
said to himself as he turned on his heel, — 

“Well, this must be stopped. I must speak to her to-night. 
She can’t say no, when she knows her father wishes her to be my 
wife. What a fool I was not to get the engagement made before, 
and then she wouldn’t walk with these captains, not if I knew 
it.” 

Rose Murray was a bright blonde, tall, of a beautiful figure, and 
a still more beautiful complexion. She was pretty, too, with a 
good forehead and refined features. A woman at once of intellect 
and of decision. It was a puzzle to many people where she got 
her good looks. Her father was of a north-country type, of 
massive build, and rather hard features. Her mother, so far as 
could be judged from an oil-painting that hung behind the door 
in the drawing-room in a heavy gilt frame, had been a common- 
place and rather fat woman, fond of laces and jewellery, it would 
seem from her costume, and generally having the Took of a house- 
keeper in a historic mansion. Rose bore no great resemblance to 
either parent, except that her mouth was firm like that of her 
father, whom she passionately loved, and that her forehead was of 
the same shape as her mother’s had been. She was a very little 
girl when that mother had been lost to her. Then her father’s 
sister had come to keep house for him, and a couple of years before 
the period of which we treat, she, too, had been carried to her rest. 
Rose, then sweet seventeen, had assumed charge, had persuaded 
her father to dine at seven instead of one, had made the whole 
house refined instead of dowdy, and bright instead of dull. She 
was very musical, and could handle a violin as well as a piano. 
She was rather clever at drawing, especially at drawing ships and 
water, and she could take her father’s rough outlines and make for 
him a finished sketch better, he said, than anybody else in Ports- 
mouth. The little backyard she had persuaded him to cover in with 
glass, and make it into a greenhouse, where she achieved wonders 
in the way of raising flowers, so that the rooms were seldom with- 
out a change of pots of delicate and often rare blossoms. And she 
did not forget that the way to make a man happy is to give him a 
good dinner, so if she did not cook it herself, she always planned it, 
and saw that it was as well served as it could be. It v/as near dinner- 
time when she returned. Captain Trevor saw her to her door. 


87 


The Building of the Yacht. 

He had bought her the music of the new opera as they came along, 
and had written on it in the shop, “ Miss Murray, with kind regards 
of T. D. T.” As they parted she said, — 

“ T. D. T. ? What docs T. D. stand for. Captain Trevor ? ” 

“ My name is Thomas Dudley Trevor, Miss Murray.” 

“ I always did like the name Tom,” she replied, and then she 
blushed, and, turning to the door, knocked a good deal longer than 
there seemed to be any need for. “ Good-bye, Captain Trevor,” 
she went on presently, “ and thank you very much.” 

He raised his hat, and went off to Government House to dress 
for dinner. As he went, he thought over and over again, — 

“ Now what did she mean by ‘Tom’? I expect she did not 
mean anything in particular. But she’s a charming girl. Heigh- 
ho ! I wonder is she engaged to that fellow Grayling ? I fancy 
not, but still there’s something.” And then he lit an anteprandial 
cigarette, and walked rapidly on. As he got near the sentry at the 
gate of Government House, he said to himself as he threw away 
the end of the cigarette, — 

“ Imagine me marrying the daughter of a boat-builder ! What 
would my lady mother say ? ” 

At half past eight, Alfred Grayling joined John Murray after 
dinner, and broached to him his intention of proposing that night, 
saying he had a reason for it. 

“ All right, Alfred, my boy, you have my best wishes. You’ll 
find her in the drawing-room. I’ll give you half-an-hour while I 
have a smoke. But I won’t wait longer, for I can’t do without the 
witch’s music.” 

When Alfred entered the drawing-room, he found Rose very pen- 
sive. It was a new thing to see her sedate and thoughtful, though 
he well knew she did a good deal of unostentatious thinking. 

“ Well, Rose, how did you like the bits from the new opera ? ” he 
began. 

“ Oh, it’s delightful,” and she got up and went to the piano. 

“ Rose, wait a moment. I want to say something to you. Rose, 
you know without my telling you that I love you, have loved you 
for years. I have your father’s consent to ask you to be my wife. 
Will you, dear ? ” 

“ I used to think you loved me, Alfred,” was the answer ; “ but 
for a long time I have wondered if it were so. You did not speak, 
and, and — ” 

“ Darling, I did not wish to speak until I saw my way a little 
clearer in business. But now I can speak. You are the only 
woman I love in the world, or ever have loved.” 

“ Well, you have not been very ardent about it, and I must take 
time to think.” 

“ We shall not get to know one another better by waiting. Don’t 
you love me a little bit. Rose.” 


88 Camps and Quarters. 

“ I like you very well, Alfred, but I must not decide without 
thinking.” 

“ Tell me there is nobody else, dear.” 

“ Alfred, you have no right to say anything like that to me ! I 
will give you an answer soon.” And she blushed deeply, and 
moved towards the piano. Sitting down at it, she opened a book 
and began to play. As she turned over the cover, he saw the 
writing on it, and caught the letters T. D. T. 

“ T. D. T . } ” he muttered ; “ can T. be for Trevor ? ” 

Before he could say anything more, John Murray entered. 

“ Well, you two weren’t long in fixing it,” he said, “ and now give 
me some music, what’s that you’re playing } It’s lively and tune- 
some.” 

Rose played on. 

jfc * :|c sH * * 

“ Well, Alfred, now that you have arranged with Rose, what do 
you say to going into partnership with me, and succeeding me in 
the yard } ” said John Murray the next noontide to Alfred Gray- 
ling, as they were looking at the men busily engaged in clearing 
the ways of the slip for the champion cutter that was to be. 

“ But I have not arranged with Rose.” 

“ Why — what — how do you mean ? Did not you ask her last 
night } I don’t understand you.” 

“I did ask her last night. You know, sir, I love her very much, 
but perhaps I did not put enough fire into my words, perhaps I took 
the thing rather too coolly, and took too much for granted. I did 
not care to say either more or less than I meant, and . . .” 

“ She didn’t refuse you ? ” 

“ No, oh, no ; but she did not accept me. She put me off till ‘ a 
more convenient season,’ as we heard in church last Sunday.’^ 

What’s the lass dreaming about ? ” said her father; “ I’ll never 
force her to marry a man she does not like, but she does like you, 
she has said so a dozen times to me ; I don’t understand it. But 
girls do like to be wooed, they don’t like to be taken for granted, 
as you say. When did she promise an answer ? ” 

“ Oh, ‘ soon.’ ” 

“ I must talk to her. This will never do. It upsets all my 
plans. You are very steady for a young man, but your cousin 
will get your uncle’s brewery, and I want my girl’s husband to be 
in a business of his own, not making money for other people. 
You know nearly as much of this yard as I do myself, and you’d 
soon pick up the rest. Have you any idea where the hitch lies 

“ She told me I had not been very ardent about love-making, 
and she seemed a little piqued. Indeed, if I were not the judge 
in my own case I should say that she implied I have missed my 
chance.” 

“ Do you mean that there’s somebody else she has taken a fancy 
to?” 


The Buildins^ of the Yachts 


89 


“Well, she’s been a good bit about with Captain Trevor lately, 
meeting him, of course by accident, on Southsea Esplanade, and 
once they were a long time leaning over the old saluting-battery 
wall. They were on the esplanade and the pier yesterday, and 
he saw her home, and that music she was playing last night was 
given her by him, it is marked T. D. T., and I found the initials 
corresponded when I looked in Holbrook’s Official List last night 
at the George.’^ 

“ Captain Trevor? Well, Rose may look up to any man in the 
land, aye, if he was a duke, let alone a younger brother of a 
baronet, and he’s a nice fellow, and a clever fellow ; but I don’t like 
it, Alfred, I don’t always trust these swells. They may mean busi- 
ness, but they very often mean mischief, though I don’t think that 
of Captain Trevor. And his family would object, I daresay. My 
daughter shall never go into any family that objects to her. I’ll 
speak to her.” 

“ I don’t think I’d do that, if I were you. It might breed 
opposition. I don’t think girls like to be disposed of by their parents. 
It’s probable that she only wants me to be a little more attentive, 
but in the day-time I’m kept so much at the brewery that I can’t 
get about with her.” 

“ That’s right, Alfred, stick to business, and business will stick to 
you.” 

“ Well, I do stick to it ; I’m not a teetotaler, but I don’t drink, 
I don’t bet, and if I have a game of billiards now and then, I don’t 
care much about it. I can’t see what there is against me, except 
that I don’t talk about love like a play actor.” 

“ I was reading the other day how some Frenchman said ‘ to 
talk of love is to make love, and perhaps it would be better to 
talk of love to her a little more.” 

“ Well, sir. I’ll try. Do you think I’d better come round in the 
evening pretty often } ” 

“ Yes, come round, and though I like my evening’s music, I’ll 
try to leave you alone together a little more than I have done. 
But here comes Captain Trevor. Good morning, sir, we’re getting 
ready for the yacht, you see. I like her design very much ; you 
know my son-in-law that is to be, Mr. Alfred Grayling ?”^ 

Captain Trevor looked rather surprised, but he only said, — 

“ Yes, I like the lines very much, and, by the way, my brother 
writes me this morning that her name is to be the Eros.” 

“ Eyross, what does that mean, captain } ” 

“ Oh, Eros was the God of Love among the Greeks, and her 
figure-head is to be the god Eros holding a rosebud. But that 
will be carved in London, and you shall have it within a fortnight. 
Well, when do you lay her down 

“ On Monday, I think, sir ; and, if you have no objection, my 
daughter wants to lay the first block of the keel. 

“ Objection ! what could be more appropriate > Indeed I 


90 


Camps and Quarters* 

ventured to ask her to do so the other day. And I hope 
Miss Rose will christen her too. My brother will be delighted, 
I’m sure. 

Alfred Grayling watched him narrowly, but said nothing, and 
Captain Trevor was conscious of the steady gaze, but bore it 
unflinchingly, so that Miss Murray’s pretendu could make nothing 
out of him. Then John Murray said, — 

“ My little girl will be greatly pleased. Somehow, she has taken 
more interest in this boat than in any other. Now, Captain Trevor, 
I want to talk to you about her.” 

Captain Trevor looked rather amused. 

“ Her ? ” he said, “ Miss Murray .? ” 

“No, the yacht I mean, of course,” replied John Murray, 
laughing ; but Alfred Grayling did not laugh, he scowled. 

“ I must get back to the brewery,” he said, “ good-day.” 

As he was leaving the yard for the floating bridge, he met his 
beloved. 

“ Ah ! ” said he, “ your father has some news for you, that will 
please you. He’s in the model-shop. And what will please you 
as well, perhaps. Captain Trevor is with him.” 

The girl flushed a little, but she quietly asked, — 

“ And why should that please me very much ? Whatever 
happens, Alfred, don’t be so absurd as to be jealous.” 

Grayling was thoroughly puzzled. Rose’s flush was no deeper 
than she was entitled to have at his remark, even if Captain Trevor 
were nothing to her. And her reply was a sort of disclaimer of 
Trevor, he could not help thinking, perhaps because he wished to 
think it. But as he went away the demon of jealousy began to 
probe his heart, as if its power were involved by her mention of it. 
He was so absorbed that he had to be asked for his toll at the 
floating bridge, and his reverie was so deep when the bridge had 
reached “ Point ” that he had to be roused by a shout of, — 

“ Now, Mr. Grayling, sir, do you want to go back with us ?” 

All that afternoon he could not settle to business, and 
when the office closed, he took the shortest route to Southsea 
Pier. 

Meanwhile Rose assisted at the conference in the model shop, 
and was immensely delighted with all she heard. Every sugges- 
tion that was made by her father or Captain Trevor she imme- 
diately transferred to paper, until the young officer, having before 
him the embodiment of each idea, could not help thinking how 
clever she was and how quick. John Murray was so much ab- 
sorbed on the business which was not only to bring him money, 
but perhaps to crown his fame, that he saw little of the ardent 
looks of his patron, and of the lowered eyelids and deep blushes 
of his daughter. But he took care that she remained when Captain 
Trevor went off to duty. Presently she also went off, and went 
home. 


91 


The Bttilding of the Yacht. 

After an hour or so she went down to Southsea. How very 
strange that she should meet Captain Trevor again ! By this time 
he had parted with his uniform, and was in morning dress, so it 
was clear “duty” had not kept him long. I think duty that day 
was confined to luncheon with General Wallis. They took a turn 
together. The turn was a long stretch, and not on the pier. It 
led them away down past the monuments on the Esplanade, past 
the Victory's anchor, past the Corinthian Club-house, past the 
guns taken from various enemies, past Southsea Castle, on the 
path outside which formidable fortification they sat down for 
a while, looking at the small squadron lying at Spithead, looking at 
the sun brightening up the young foliage over on the Isle of Wight, 
looking at the leaping and dancing waves, but, most of all, looking 
furtively at each other, and feeling both confused and happy when 
caught at it. Then on over a more broken path, where politeness 
if not necessity suggested a little help from the gentleman to the 
lady, almost as far as they could go without leaving everybody 
quite behind them. What did they talk about ? I’m sure I don’t 
know. Nothing in particular possibly ; probably a little about the 
EroSy nothing about themselves we may be sure. When Rose 
looked at her watch she found it was long past five o’clock, so 
instead of returning by the beach, they made their way across the 
Common, and so past the Pier Hotel and the Cross to Lion 
Terrace — the shortest way. It was also the way they could hardly 
have been expected to go. But jealousy is Argus-eyed. Alfred 
Grayling, lounging by Southsea Pier, caught a glimpse of them and 
then kept them in sight. He saw them walk along past Cambridge 
Barracks, he saw them part at Lion Terrace, he saw Captain 
Trevor go off to Government House after lighting his cigarette, 
and then he went on to John Murray’s house and went in. He 
found Rose in the drawing-room, still in her beaded mantle and 
her coquettish hat. 

“ Rose,” he said abruptly, “ you have been out walking again 
with Captain Trevor.” 

She at once got up from the sofa. Nobody knew better than 
this maiden the improvement in her appearance when she was 
standing. 

“ Yes, Alfred, and what then ? ” 

“ I don’t like it, and I won’t have it.” 

“ Alfred ! ” 

“ I shall tell your father about it, it is not right, it is not proper ; 
you will compromise yourself, and . . .” 

“ Mr. Grayling, by what right do you speak thus to rne ? You 
have no such right, and now I will tell you that after this display 
you never will have. Oh, you needn’t look so black at me. I 
would not trust my happiness to any man who can behave as you 
have done. Captain Trevor is a gentleman and a friend of papa’s, 
and I shall not be rude to him when I see him merely to please you. 


92 


Camps and Qttarters, 

If you had not dilly-dallied, if you had got any right to find fault 
with me, your way of doing it would have been bad enough, but to 
speak to me as you have done is an outrage, and I wish you good- 
day.” 

“ But, Rose, I have asked you to be my wife.^* 

She turned at the door, and said, — 

“You can spare yourself the trouble of repeating your offer, Mr. 
Grayling.” 

Alfred Grayling’s face then and for long afterwards was not 
pleasant to look upon. Few people had ever seen him in a bad 
temper, but his disappointment raised a devil in his breast that 
looked out at his eyes and revealed the torturing fiend within. 
He was half startled at his own aspect as he caught his reflection 
in the pier-glass between the windows. Then he w ent out into 
the falling night. Heavy clouds were flying over the sky from the 
south-west, and the wind betokened a storm during the night as 
it swayed the branches of the young trees in the Soldiers’ 
Recreation-ground, and whistled under the archway of the barracks. 
Reckless of his steps, he was unconsciously taking his way to the 
“ George.” His throat was parched, his frame aflame. He went on 
to the bar of the hotel and ordered a peg. He was drinking it at a 
gulp, v/hen he heard John Murray behind him say,-— 

“ Thirsty, Alfred ? Well come up to dinner. After that, I’m 
going out for a while.” 

“ I can’t, sir,” exclaimed Grayling ; “ I’ll see you to-morrow.” 
And with that he put down his shilling, and went off like a rocket. 
The yacht-builder stared at him, and after him, and said to himself, 

“ I never saw Alfred like that before.” 

Then he spoke a word on business to mine host, and continued 
his way to his home. At dinner he said to his daughter, — 

“ I met Alfred a while ago, deary, and he was greatly upset about 
something.” 

“ Papa, he insulted me, and I never want to see him or hear his 
name again.” 

Then she explained what had happened, and at every word 
Murray looked more and more annoyed. 

“ But, Rose, I wish you to look over this. It was only because 
he is fond of you that he spoke so. And I want you two to come 
together. I want him to come into the business with me. It is 
getting too much for me, and I am not so young as I was, and 
must train somebody up to succeed me. Come, my daughter, you 
won’t refuse your old loving father. I have set my heart on this 
match. Come and kiss me, and forget all about Alfred’s crossness.” 

“ Crossness, papa } He insulted me. He said I was com- 
promising myself by being polite to Captain Trevor. And oh! 
when he spoke 1 saw what a wicked heart he had. His face was 
like a madman’s. He frightened me. Oh ! I would die sooner 
than marry a man who could look like that. No, papa, spare me, 


The Building of the Yacht, 93 

spare me!^ I could not, I could not.” And she came and knelt 
down by his side, and buried her face in her hands on his knee. 

Well, little girl, we must let things be for a while. He will 
apologize to you, and then you will please me, won’t you ? ” 

“No, papa; and you would not ask me if you had seen his face. 
Oh ! what a bad look it had. No, dear, dear papa, anything but 
that, anything but that.” 

“ Rose, I must ask you then for one promise. Don’t go out 
walking with Captain Trevor any more.” 

“But if I meet him, papa, I must speak to him. Why, what 
has he done What have I done? He is your friend, and now 
that you are building the yacht you will have to see him so 
often, and I can’t be rude to him.” 

“ At any rate, dear, he ought not to make love to you without 
my knowledge.” 

“ But he hasn’t. He has never said a word about it. Only we 
have met by chance, and he is so kind.” 

“ Well, deary, don’t for a few days go where you are likely to 
meet him, and we’ll talk about this again. Give me some music. 
I was going to smoke a cigar with Fred Burton, thinking Alfred 
would be here to keep you company ; but it is raining and blowing 
so hard. I’ll just stay at home with my pet.” 

“ Oh, dear papa, go out. I’ll get your waterproof. I could not 
play to-night, I have such a headache. Go out, you dear old 
thing” — here she kissed him, and he could feel her hand and face 
were burning — “ and I’ll go to bed. Papa, I’ll do anything you ask 
me, except marry Alfred Grayling.” And she shuddered as she 
mentioned the name. 

The next day, and the next, and the next. Grayling saw John 
Murray at the yard, and also called at Lion Terrace. Here Miss 
Murray was always “ not at home.” 

When a week had passed. Rose met Captain Trevor in High 
Street. She was looking pale, and he inquired about her health, 
and rallied her on having abandoned her favourite promenade. 
They were together only a few minutes. 

The day after that, John Murray received the following letter at 
the yard. It was in a woman’s writing, apparently but evidently 
disguised : — 

“ Mr. Murray, — Look well after your daughter. She will be 
the prey of a villain. She met him yesterday, and made an 
appointment with him. — A Friend.” 

The yacht-builder read this a second time, and folded it up 
carefully and put it away in his pocket-book, with a very grim 
countenance indeed. By the mid-day post he received another 
epistle in the same writing. The missive consisted of no more 
than — 

“All the daughters of musick shall be brought low. — Eccle- 
siastes xii. 4. 


94 


Camps and Quartersm 

“ She was his only child. . . . Alas, my daughter ! thou hast 
brought me very low. — Judges xi. 35.” 

After being compared with its predecessor, this was laid away 
beside it, and John Murray’s countenance grew yet more grim. 
But he went on about his work. An hour later an orderly 
brought him a note. It read : — 

“Government House, ii a.m. 

“ Dear Sir, — Can you meet me at two o’clock, "either here or at 
your house in Lion Terrace ? My brother is very ill, and I must 
go to him by the first train after I can get leave. Pardon the 
trouble I give you, but I cannot po.ssibly spare the time to go to 
Gosport. I shall take it that Lion Terrace will be more convenient 
for both of us. 

“Yours truly, 

“T D. Trevor, Capt, A.D.C.” 

The first thought that occurred to John Murray, as he-started to 
keep the appointment, was that probably work would have to be 
stopped on the yacht. It would be a disappointment, but no loss, 
for he had received with the order more than enough to cover 
expenditure up to the present point. His next thought was that 
if Trevor’s brother died, that young officer might be very wealthy 
and a baronet, if he were not an uncle. In that case, the yacht 
would be built no doubt. When he got to Lion Terrace, he found 
Captain Trevor already there, and in the drawing-room with Rose. 

“ I came as quickly as I could. I’m not too late. Sorry to 
hear this. Hope he’s not bad, captain.” These words came out 
in puffs and jerks, for John Murray had been walking fast, not 
having found a tramcar ready. 

“ Oh, there was no hurry for a few minutes ; but I’m afraid he’s 
very ill. Though we are brothers of the half-blood only, we are 
much attached. But you will understand that the work on the 
yacht — don’t go. Miss Murray. You must? Then adieu, and 
revoir. The work on the yacht must be stopped till you hear from 
me. Probably it will be all right, certainly, so far as depends upon 
me. But this I could have written or telegraphed to you. What 
I wanted to see you about, was this. Here I have had two letters, 
evidently in a disguised hand, both bearing the Portsmouth post- 
mark of this morning.” 

And he showed the yacht-builder two letters similar in character 
to those Mr. Murray had received. 

“ Now I could not go away from Portsmouth, even for a few 
days, without seeing you, and . . .” 

“ Look here, captain. I’ve got two as well as you. Here they 
are,” and he handed them to Trevor. “ Now, captain, let me ask 
you, have you offended any woman in Portsmouth .? It is not the 
writing, but there’s something about this so mean and spiteful that 
I have thought it must come from a woman.” 


95 


The Building of the Yacht, 

“ No, Murray, no ; I know no woman in Portsmouth who could 
have any motive for this. You will see it is evidently aimed at 
me and Miss Murray. Now the time has come to say to you that 
I admire your daughter very much. She would do honour to any 
society, and she is as good as she is beautiful. I have met her 
several times at Southsea in the afternoon, and we have gone on 
the pier together, and walked on the esplanade together ; but I give 
you my word as an officer, and a gentleman, and a man of honour, 
that I have never told her how I admire her, or said one word 
which you were not welcome to hear. I thought it due to both 
of us to say as much frankly.” 

“ Say no more, captain, say no more. Please leave these with 
me for the present. Pll ferret it out, depend on it. Good-bye, 
captain, I hope you’ll have good news.” 

When Trevor had gone, John Murray asked for his daughter. 
She had gone shopping. “ It is just as well,” said he to himself. 
“ I’ll keep it from her. I hope she hasn’t got any of these precious 
murderous stabs,” and at the last two words he brought his hand 
down on the piano near which he stood, till the wires vibrated as 
they do in “ The Battle of Prague.” Then he put on his hat and 
went to Grayling’s brewery. “ If it’s Alfred, I’ll thrash him,” was 
his resolve uttered to himself as he walked along. When he 
reached the brewery with its rumbling barrels, and its odour 
of fermenting malt, and its burly draymen, and its hissing 
steam, he turned into the counting-house, and met Alfred coming 
out. 

“ I want a word with you in private,” he said. “ Where shall 
we go ? ” 

“ Come into the store ; I want to see you too. T.ook here what 
I got this morning. Depend upon it, there’s some woman been 
watching that captain for some cause or other, or she wouldn’t 
write like this,” — and he showed another of those anonymous 
warnings. 

“ There, sir, what do you think of that for a relish for breakfast ? 
I found it when I came to start the hands this morning.” 

Well, I am dashed,” said Murray ; “ here are two I got to-day, 
and two the captain got. They’re all in the same writing, but 
some of them were posted last night, and some this morning. 
Well, God help whoever has done it, when I find it out.” And 
the big North-countryman clenched his fist and knit his brow, and 
strode away. 

A week went over, and then came a letter from Captain Trevor 
to Murray. It told how Sir Henry Trevor had been thrown from 
a hansom cab, and that concussion of the brain had ensued, that 
he had died in his brother’s arms, and that the writer was now Sir 
Thomas Trevor, and would be in Portsmouth in a few days. The 
' work on the yacht was to be immediately resumed, and all 
diligence to be used in completing her even if the estimate were 


96 


Camps and Quarters, 

exceeded. The letter concluded by asking Murray to convey the 
writer’s kind regards to his daughter. The word had been written 
kindest, but the three last letters had been obliterated. Mean- 
while Alfred Grayling had called in Lion Terrace one evening, and 
said to the yacht-builder that he had come to know his fate. So 
he went into the drawing-room alone. 

“ Rose,” he said,* “ I have come to ask you for the answer you 
promised to me. I am mad with love for you, and I can stand it 
no longer. Will you be my wife, darling } ” 

“ Alfred, I dare not. I could not marry a man whom I could 
not love. If I thought I could love you, I would ask you for 
time. But it would be no use, and the kindest thing for both of us is 
that you should think of me no more in that way. But we have 
been friends so long, let us be friends again.” 

And then she extended her shapely hand. But he would not 
take it He rose from the chair on which he had been seated near 
her, and said, — • 

“Very well; I suppose it’s that — captain who has cut me out. 
But I’ll be even with both of you.” 

In a few days John Murray’s friends began to elevate their 
eyebrows. One of Rose’s old school-fellows crossed High Street 
to avoid her, and another turned off the Esplanade across the 
Common — a cut direct. At last Rose spoke to her father about 
it all at breakfast, and he could make nothing out of it, and went 
to his yard in a very bad humour. When noon came and the men 
were breaking off for their dinners, he was going into his office to eat 
his sandwiches and drink his glass of sherry and have his pipe, 
when he saw his oldest friend in Portsmouth coming through the 
gateway looking very glum. He shook hands with him, and they 
went in together. 

“What's the matter, Fred?” said the yacht-builder. “I 
haven’t seen you for a fortnight. Where have you been ? ” 

“ Oh, I’ve been in London, and at Brighton, and I wish I had 
stayed there rather than come down here to hear what I do hear. 
Well, there’s no use in beating about the bush, I’ve come to say it, 
and I mean to say it, though I daresay you won't thank me when 
it’s said. There’s not a man in Portsmouth, or Portsea, or Land- 
port, or Southsea, or in the Island, no, nor in Hampshire, would 
tell you but myself; but I said to my wife this morning, ‘John 
Murray and I have been man and boy together these five-and- 
thirty years and more, and if it was my case I’d be obliged to 
him for telling me, if it cut me to the heart, and so I’ll tell him.* 
‘You’d better not,’ she said. And I said I would, and here I am 
to do if' 

“ Do what, tell what for God’s sake ? ” 

“ Why, tell you that half the people in the place have had letters 
saying that gay young dog of an aide-de-camp of the General’s is 
too intimate with your daughter.” 


The Building of the Yacht, 97 

“ With my Rose ? It’s a lie, Fred Burton, — a damned lie ! Who 
dares to say it ? ” 

“ Why, everybody. Now, don’t be in a passion with me. I won’t 
stand it. I come to tell you as I would have told you anything that 
it was right you should know any time these forty years nearly. If 
it’s true, it’s right you should know it ; and if it’s not true, it’s all 
the more reason you should have a friend as is a friend to tell you 
of it.” 

They looked at each other fair and square in the face, those two 
old cronies, and then they put out their hands together and held 
one another fast. 

“ It’s a lie, Fred ; a black and malicious lie. I know all about 
it. My girl has no secrets from me. If I can trace this lie home 
where I suspect there’ll be murder done, and you’ll see your 
old friend in Winchester gaol. Come with me. You’ll stand by 
me, Fred ?” 

“ Ay, that I will, John.” 

The two chums crossed the harbour together, and finding, for a 
wonder, a fly by Portsmouth pier, they entered it. 

“ Grayling’s brewery,” cried Murray, and then relapsed into 
silence, which Burton respected. When they reached the brewery, 
John Murray strode in. He met the proprietor. 

“ Where’s Alfred ? ” he exclaimed in a voice of thunder. 

Why, what’s the matter ? ” said Mr. Grayling. “ Alfred ? he’s 
gone on a holiday, he wasn’t very well, and he went to London 
a few days ago, meaning to go somewhere in the north for a run. 
What’s the matter, Murray ?” 

“ Murder’s the matter, if I get hold of him. He has been lying 
about my girl.” 

‘‘ About Miss Rose ! Why, I thought he was sweet on her. 
He told me you wanted to take him into partnership when they 
were married.” 

John Murray vouchsafed no answer; he went back to the fly 
and took his seat. 

“ Be careful, John,” said Burton. 

“Oh, I’ll be careful enough. Won’t you get in ? No ? Coach- 
man, drive back to where I took you.” 

It was the following morning that Murray received Sir 
Thomas Trevor’s letter. He put the hands on the yacht 
again, and kept his own counsel. He said nothing, even to Rose, 
save that he advised her to stay indoors for a time. A fortnight 
later the aide-de-camp returned and resumed his duty. Early the 
next day he went over to Gosport, and saw the Eros had made 
more progress than he had expected. Already her shapely lines 
were beginning to appear. He went into the office. After a 
few words of congratulation upon the good work done, he said, — 

“ Well, Murray, I have had my trial, and you look as if you had 
one too. What is it ? Nothing wrong with Miss Murray, I hope.” 

H 


98 


Camps and Quarters. 

No, captain — Sir Thomas I mean ; she's well, but she's 
miserable, and so am I. Some wretch has been coupling her name 
with yours, and not to her advantage, nor yours either." 

And then he opened his budget, and in tones of great indigna- 
tion cried out that he did not see what could be done. The girl 
was a good girl ; but her reputation had been poisoned, and there 
was nothing for it but to wait till the reptile returned if he ever 
did, and then he would be made to confess the lie if he had to be 
choked to get the avowal out of him. 

“ There is one thing that can be done,” said the baronet with 
much coolness, and even an approach to a smile. “ May I see Miss 
Murray ? " 

“Why, yes ... in my presence,” replied the yacht-builder, 
startled into suspicion. 

“ That might be awkward — for her,” was the smiling answer. 
“ But I have no objection. Suppose you are in the next room ? I 
will call this evening then.” And off the young man went, quite 
in a good humour. 

“ That's strange,” said Murray. 

Soon after nine o'clock that night the aide-de-camp in mess 
dress, with a band of crape on his left arm, reached Lion Terrace. 
He was shown into the drawing-room, where he found Rose 
watering some of her namesakes. To her surprise her father got 
up without a word, and went into the dining-room. 

Oh, Captain Trevor, I am so glad to see you. I was so sorry 
to hear of your loss. What a sad accident.” 

“ Y es, it had only one redeeming quality — it seems selfish and 
unnatural to say so, but it made me a free man. I was a younger 
brother, with a very small allowance, and dependent upon my 
mother for my pecuniary prospects. Now that poor Hal’s gone, 
I am my own master, and can please myself. I am going to do 
so. Dear Miss Murray, sweet Rose, do you think you could love 
me .? Will you be my wife ? ” 

“Your wife! Are you quite sure of what you are saying. 
Captain Trevor? You are a baronet now, and you should have a 
great lady for your wife. I shall always . . .” 

“ Be always mine. I want you not because I am a baronet, but 
because I love you, and have loved you for a long time.” 

“ But I have not known you lorig.' 

“ Then ever since I knew you, and you have grown to be so dear 
to me. Can you love me ? ” 

She gave him no answer ; but he read consent in her face, and 
clasped her in his arms just as her father entered. “ I have your 
approval, Mr. Murray, have I not ?” 

“God bless you both,” was all John Murray could say for a 
moment. “ And now sit down, both of you, till I tell you some- 
thing. Rose is only a yacht-builder’s daughter, and yet in 
point of family you need not be ashamed of her. Forty years 


99 


The Building of the Yacht, 

ago a motherless lad was left fatherless. He did not like his 
stepmother, and she did not like him. The property he should 
have come in for had been ruined by racing and gambling. 
There was scarcely enough for the woman who was left and her 
young children. The lad found himself very unhappy, so, taking 
a few seals and papers belonging to his father, and a miniature 
of his mother, which he had long secretly cherished, he ran 
away, went out into the world, to seek his fortune with his 
horse and a few shillings in his pocket. After a while he sold the 
horse and with the money he went to London. There, when he 
had tried many times to find employment, he got work in a ship- 
building yard in Poplar. When he had learnt a little of the craft, 
he saved some money, and set up for himself in a small way. He 
got a name as a builder of good wherries, and one day he 
tendered for some boats that were wanted for the navy. He got 
the contract. In the course of business he had to come to 
Portsmouth. He saw his chance and he has been here for more 
than thirty years. But he has not lost his good blood even if he 
is only a boat-builder. Take his daughter, my son ; she is of as 
good a family as your own, and better in heart than she is in blood. 
We are Murrays of Otterburn, some call it Chevy Chase, and if my 
great-grandfather had got over the attainder when he tried, we 
should be something more than country gentlemen. God bless 
you both ! ” 

Two months after that the Eros was to be launched. A whole 
heap of people came down from London and over from Cowes to 
see the sending off of the cutter that was going to be famous. The 
General was there and the Port Admiral and half the people in 
the naval and military directory. One might have thought it was 
a man-of-war that was to be put afloat, instead of an eighty-ton 
pleasure-vessel. 

“ She is a beautiful thing” said the admiral. 

“ There is nothing so handsome afloat,” declared the master- 
shipwright. 

“ You have challenged for the American Cup, I think ?” asked 
the General. 

“ Why, no,” was his aide-de-camp’s reply, “ that was my poor 
brother’s idea, and then he meant to give her to me whether she won 
or lost 1 But I shall not challenge with her. I mean to put her 
to a better use. I will pass my honeymoon in her. Rose, dearest 
and here he took her hand and placed it under his arm, “ let me 
present you to my friends : ladies and gentlemen. Miss Murray, m> 
betrothed.” 

A moment later the tide served ; the signal was given ; the 
shores were knocked away; Rose broke a bottle of champagne on 
the figure-head, which somebody discovered to be a portrait of 
herself, called the yacht the Eros, and wished her good-luck. There 

H 2 


lOO 


Camps and Quarters, 

was a gentle sliding movement apparent in a moment, it quickened. 
The people on the platform and the slip cheered, the people in the 
boats took up the shouting, somebody let off some guns close by, 
and then there arose a wild shriek from hundreds of throats. A 
wherry containing one man beside the boatman was cut down by 
the stern of the yacht, and with much ado the boatman was 
rescued. But the passenger was missing. 

“Who was he?” they cried to the boatman when he was 
brought ashore and had some brandy poured down his throat 

“ Who was he ? Why he was Mr. Alfred Grayling of the brewery, 
he was ; he wanted to land before she was launched, though I 
warned him it was dangerous, but he would have it, and he was a 
cussing of the yacht furious like when he saw her move. Lord, 
how he did cuss her ! And isn’t he saved ? Well, well, now that 
is a judgment sure/^.” 

The body was found by Block House Fort at low water, and in 
a pocket was a book containing the drafts of the letters he had 
sent to Rose and her father. It “ was a judgment, surely.” 



lOI 


** I think,” Lucy said tossing her head a little, when the story 
was ended, “ without knowing anything of the customs that prevail 
at Portsmouth, that the young woman behaved, to say the least of 
it, strangely. It is all nonsense to talk about accidental meetings, 
and for a young woman in her position of life to walk about with 
an officer day after day, was, I should think, fast even in a garrison 
town. As to the man, it seems to me that he is rather to be regarded 
as a madman than as a scoundrel, for of course there could be no 
difficulty in tracing the letters to him, even if he had not taken 
the precaution of keeping copies, and he laid himself open to be 
horsewhipped by the father, and prosecuted for libel by the young 
woman. Anyhow, I cannot regard Captain Trevor as being a 
fortunate young man.” This snub put a stop to story-telling for 
some little time. 

“ By the way, I think you were down at Dover last year, were 
you not?” the man they called Charley said presently to me. “You 
were on Stevenson’s Staff, I fancy ? ” I quite gave a start, for 
really this looked as if sometimes they did get near the truth ; but 
of course I saw directly that Sir John or Lucy must have happened 
to mention it, at the Easter review. “ Yes,” I said, “ I was there, 
but I don’t remember seeing you.” “ I was not gorgeous in blue 
and gold,” he said with a nasty sort of laugh, that struck me as 
being a deucid bit of impertinence ; “what did you think of the 
Volunteers ? ” “I don’t know that I thought much about them one 
way or other,” I said ; “ it amuses them, don’t you see, and doesn’t 
do any harm. Of course one doesn’t suppose that they would be 
any good if it came to real work.” 

“Why not?” he asked sharply. “You don’t suppose, do you, 
that because a man puts on a red coat he gets any additional 
courage from that. My own opinion is that in real fighting, an 
average battalion of Volunteers would be every bit as good as an 
average battalion of the line, and a bit over. 

“ I quite agree with you,” one of the others said. “ They have drill 
enough, an excellent morale, and I believe you could trust them to. 
stand where they were put until they were pretty nearly exter- 
minated, and I am sure they would not be given to sudden panics. 
I quite grant the French. Franc-Tireurs, whom I saw a good deal 
of in ’70-71, were very little account, but then they had never 
previously worked together as our Volunteers have done. They 
had no confidence in their officers, or in each other, and lastly 
some of them had volunteered only to escape being called out to 
join the line, and others were shop-boys who went in for the sake 
of the fancy uniforms. It was just the same with the Garibaldians 
in 1866. I saw them at work, and I am bound to say that it was a 
sickening exhibition and then lighting his pipe afresh, he began 
the following dreary story. 



©ut with the 1Reb-Sbfrt6. 


The campaign in the Tyrol with the Garibaldians, was one of 
the most pleasant expeditions I have ever been engaged in. The 
scenery was lovely, the weather glorious, the temperature just the 
right thing — pleasant and warm during the day, a little sharp at 
night. The roads were good ; I travelled in a carriage with two 
comrades who were all that could be desired as companions, 
and the Garibaldians themselves were as pleasant and cheery a set 
of fellows as ever carried knapsack. There were, of course, draw- 
backs, as there always will be. It was difficult to obtain lodgings 
of any kind, next to impo.ssible to get food, and it 'was only by 
incessant foraging among out-of-the-way farmhouses, that one 
succeeded in getting eggs, and an occasional fowl to eat with the 
bread, which formed the staple of our food, and even this was some- 
times only to be obtained by sending the carriage away ten or 
twelve miles to fetch it from villages that lay out of the way of the 
march of the all-devouring army. 

There was no obtaining food from the Garibaldians, they had 
little enough for themselves, for the utmost energies of the 
Government were strained in supplying the regular army, and 
Garibaldi’s force among the hills had to shift as best they could. 
Often the troops were twenty- four hours without even a crust of bread, 
and the men had only one thin blanket to protect them from the 
night dews and frost ; but they took it all good temperedly, and 
nothing in the way of hardship and privation came amiss to them. 
As Wolfe, a German officer of Garibaldi’s, one of those soldiers of 
fortune who are always to be found where fighting is going on, 
once said to me, — 

“The Garibaldians have but one fault ; were it not for that, they 
would make the best soldiers in the world. They are very quick 
and intelligent in picking up their drill, they can march Jong 
distances, they can stand cold and hunger. They are always 
cheerful and good tempered, they are very amenable to discipline. 
They have but one fault : they will not fight.” But this was said 
later on. At the time we joined them, that little defect had not 
.shown itself clearly. It was true that at Rocca dAnfo, the frontier 
post at the Tyrol, they had behaved badly, being held in check by 


Out with th^ Red- Skirts, 


103 


a handful of Austrians. Here Garibaldi himself had been wounded 
while trying to get them to advance, wounded, it was whispered, by 
a shot from one of his own men, who were firing off their muskets 
at random. 

However, allowances were made for this affair. It was their first 
engagement. They had believed that the Austrians would run 
away the instant they saw them, and were naturally disappointed 
at finding this not the case. Anyhow, it was thought that they 
would do better next time. They had been largely reinforced, and 
the Austrians had fallen back, and with light hearts the army had 
crossed the frontier, and had taken up a position on a hill called 
Mount Suello ; which lies on one side of the valley of the Idro ; the 
little river of that name ran along the Garibaldian side of the valley, 
and was crossed by a bridge at the village of Caffaro. On the other 
side of the plain, some three miles higher up, lay Storo, at the 
mouth of the pass. This was held by the Austrians. 

The day after our arrival there, a column about a thousand strong 
was seen advancing along the road from Storo, the Garibaldian 
pickets beyond Caffaro falling back hastily as they approached. 
As the column approached the village, little puffs of smoke rose 
from behind hedges and trees, and from the houses of the village, 
and the reports were mingled with the louder cracks of the jager 
rifles of the company advancing in skirmishing order at the head 
of the column. 

By this time three or four Garibaldian regiments were pouring 
down the hill towards the scene of action, but before they could 
reach it, the red shirts evacuated that part of the village beyond 
the river, and ran back across the bridge. As soon as the Austrians 
were in possession, five guns of the Royal Artillery opened from 
various points on the hill side, and the Austrians having doubtless 
fulfilled their mission of discovering whether the Garibaldians were 
there in force, fell back towards Storo. Half an hour later, five regi- 
ments crossed the river and marched upon Storo, which v^’as found 
to be evacuated by the enemy, and by evening, some 10,000 men 
were bivouacked round the village. 

There had been nothing particularly creditable in the skir- 
mish ; but the Garibaldians were in high spirits. The Tedeschi 
had fled before them ; victory was assured ; terrible things 
would be done next time they met them. The village was a 
pretty one, and was charmingly situated. Close behind it the hills 
rose almost perpendicularly, while at the end of the street the road 
curved sharply and entered a narrow pass, in which, a mile beyond, 
stood a little fort guarding the passage. Beyond sending a 
picket up this road, no precautions whatever were taken ; indeed, 
that the Austrians might take the offensive was an idea too 
preposterous to be entertained for a moment. 

One regiment was stationed in the village itself, piling their arms 
in the streets, and every house was soon filled by the officers of 


104 


Camps and Quarter's. 

Garibaldi's staff and those of the regiment. We thought ourselves 
lucky in obtaining possession of a loft stored with hay, which 
afforded us capital beds. Having seen to this important matter, 
we sallied out to the one inn in the village. This was crowded with 
soldiers, who had taken possession of the whole place. The host 
and hostess and two maids were at their wits' end. There was, they 
assured their clamorous visitors, no food whatever in the house, for 
the Austrians had devoured everything ; there was, however, plenty 
of wine. Casks were broached, and a non-commissioned officer or 
two taking charge of these, served out the wine and collected 
money, which they duly handed over to the host. Many of the men 
were cooking their rations by the fire, and having been lucky 
enough to obtain a dozen eggs and some bread that morning, I 
succeeded, after some search, in finding a frying-pan, and manu- 
facturing an omelette. 

Hunger appeased, we went out into the village again. It was an 
amusing scene, the street was blocked with guns, baggage-waggons 
and vehicles of all kinds ; the Garibaldians in their red shirts and 
blue grey knickerbockers pervaded the whole place, leaning out of 
all the windows, talking and shouting to their friends in the street 
below, and chatting with the women, who stood at their doors be- 
wildered at this sudden eruption, but doing their utmost to appear 
pleased at the arrival of those who called themselves their deliverers. 
At heart, however, I had no difficulty in discovering, when talking 
quietly with them, that the inhabitants of the villages on the 
Austrian side of the frontier of the Tyrol were by no means so 
desirous of emancipation from what the Italians called the Austrian 
yoke, as they were represented to be. 

They had not been heavily taxed, and had, as far as they knew, no 
complaint to make against the Austrians. Moreover, and this went 
for much, the simple peasants were all good Catholics, and had 
evidently been taught by their priests to regard the Garibaldians 
as a host of free-thinkers, who feared neither God nor devil. These 
opinions, however, naturally found no expression before the 
Garibaldians, and indeed there was clearly a feeling of relief that 
the new-comers behaved themselves quietly and decently, and that, 
beyond quartering themselves as -thickly as could be among 
the various houses, they made themselves in no way obnoxious, 
and respected alike the virtue of the women, and the property of 
the householders. 

The Garibaldian regiments had with them Vivandi^res, volunteers 
like themselves, and many of these girls had brothers or lovers in 
the regiments with which they marched. I came upon a couple 
standing a little apart from the crowd in a quiet corner. I had 
noticed the girl on the previous day’s march, for she was an excep- 
tion to the general rule, which was that the Vivandi^res, although 
decidedly picturesque, were generally by no means pretty. The 
girl in question was, however, distinctly so, and as she marched at 


Out with the Red-Shirts. 


105 


the head of the regiment with three or four companions, I had 
observed none of the jaunty, and to say the truth, somewhat brazen 
air which distinguished the greater part of these young females. 
The young fellow talking to her was evidently her lover. 

“ It was unlucky, Theresa,’’ he was saying, “ that our regiment 
was not in front to-day. We should not have hesitated, we 
should have gone right at them with the bayonet, and, you know, 
the Austrians cannot stand the bayonet.” 

So they say, Carlo ; to-morrow we shall see ; but you must not 
be too brave, you know. Of course you are brave, I know that, but 
you must not be rash. You must fight with the rest, but do not let 
your courage carry you away. I know how you hate the Tedeschi, 
and so do 1, and so do we all, but do not throw away your life.” 

“ I will try, for your sake, to be calm, Theresa ; but I must do my 
duty, you know.” 

“ Of course, dear ; only you must not be too brave. We must 
all give our lives for Italy, if needs be, but I shall be unhappy if 
you do not promise not to do anything rash.” 

“ I promise, Theresa,” he said with the air of a man making a 
great sacrifice, “ I will restrain myself.” 

He was a well-built, pleasant-looking young fellow, belonging, I 
should say, to the tradesmen class, and had doubtless given up his 
place behind a counter to carry a gun behind Garibaldi. A large 
proportion of the Garibaldians belonged to this class ; they had 
joined, perhaps, in the first place, because by so doing, they escaped 
the risk of being called upon to swell the ranks of the regular army. 
In the second, because the force of public opinion, and especially 
the opinion of their sweethearts and female friends, was so strong, 
that they could not decently remain behind when the youth of 
Italy were going out to drive the hated Austrian from their country. 
And in the last place they had joined because they believed honestly 
that the enemy would never stand against the red shirts of Garibaldi. 
It was a picnic rather than a war that they were going to take 
part in, and after it was over, they would return covered with 
glory as distinguished members of Garibaldi’s resistless army. 

After Rocca d’Anfo, I do not think Garibaldi himself cherished 
any illusions respecting the character of the force underhis command. 
Very different men were these to the determined band of political 
exiles who gathered round him at Messina, men who, for the 
most part, fought with halters round their necks, and were perfectly 
willing to give their lives for what they regarded as a sacred 
cause. He suffered much from the wound he had received 
in the first fight, and was unable to mount a horse. The 
responsibility of his position as General of an army of some 30,000 
men weighed upon him, for although a gallant soldier, Garibaldi 
was no organizer, and although he was incessantly at work, his 
staff was a most inefficient one, and his face constantly bore a 
harassed and anxious expression. 


io6 Camps and Quarters. 

He had several well-meaning ladies about him, who pestered him 
with their constant attentions, and one of the staff told me that 
while he was lying ill from his wound, he raised himself in his 
bed after a long visit from one of these ladies, and said piteously, 

“ Who will deliver me from Mrs. C ? ” Fortunately this 

exclamation was not taken by those standing round in the same 
spirit in which a similar remark concerning A’Becket was re- 
ceived by the knights of King Henry II., and the good lady con- 
tinued her ministrations to the end of the campaign in the serene 
belief that she was Garibaldi’s guardian, protector, and good 
angel. 

For six days we remained at Storo. There was a sharp skirmish 
with a body of Austrians who pushed a reconnaissance down from 
the head of the valley of Idro, but no forward move was made up 
the pass. Every day added to our strength, until some 25,000 men 
were gathered round Storo. Things were getting monotonous when 
one morning, as we were at breakfast, we were startled by a 
musketry fire apparently close at hand, the outbreak being 
accompanied by a babel of shouts and screams, in the street outside. 
We ran out to see what was the matter. Storo was in a state of 
the wildest confusion. 

The Garibaldians were running here and there, ofhcers were 
shouting, women rushing out of their houses to snatch up their 
children and drag them into shelter, horses were kicking, and 
teamsters swearing. Still the fire of musketry was going on, 
and looking up at the top of the rock some five hundred feet 
above us, we saw a party of Austrians calmly directing their fire 
into the village. Some houses were hit, some tiles broken, and 
a good many pieces of plaister chipped off walls ; but in a won- 
derfully short time the streets were deserted, and no one was 
wounded. 

In ten minutes, the men belonging to a battery a few hundred 
yards out in the plain had dug holes for the trails of their guns, so 
as to give them sufficient elevation, and shell after shell was sent 
up against the party who had so rudely disturbed our tranquillity, and 
these having no doubt greatly enjoyed their diversion, presently 
disappeared. It spoke volumes for the incapacity of Garibaldi^s 
staff, that during the six days of our stay at the village, no attempt 
had been made to occupy a position which so completely com- 
manded us, and which was open to the Austrians from their 
fort at Ampola, scarce a mile up the pass. 

Steps were now taken not only to prevent a recurrence of 
the attack, but to u .ilize the height. A strong body of Garibaldians 
made their way up a path, which seemed practicable only for goats, 
to the top, and with enormous labour, dragged, by means of ropes, 
half-a-dozen field-guns and their carriages after them. On the 
following day, the attack on the fort began, and we climbed to 
the top of the hill, and from here had a fine view down into the 


Out with the Red-Shirts, 


107 


valley behind, up which the road we had to follow passed. It was 
narrow and winding, with only sufficient space between the foot of 
the hills for the road and a little river that ran beside it. 

At the apparent end of this defile it widened a little, and here 
stood the tiny fort of Ampola. Looking from the distance at which 
we were, which was about a mile and a quarter, the fort might have 
been an ordinary dwelling-house, the two embrasures having the 
appearance ot windows in the upper storey. A glass showed a row 
of loopholes in the storey below. Above the fort the black and 
yellow Austrian flag waved defiantly ; but small as the place was, it 
had sufficed to stop an army of over 20,000 men from advancing into 
the Tyrol for nearly a week. Its strength consisted in its position ; 
for except from the heights, at a distance so great that the only 
cannon that could be conveyed were almost useless against its 
solid masonry, no guns could be brought to bear upon it. Nor 
could they be placed in the road, except close under its fire, as, 
owing to a bend in the defile, the fort could not be seen until 
approached within a distance of three hundred yards. 

The scene was a most picturesque one, the wild mountain, the 
narrow valley and nine guns at different points on the heights 
playing on the little fort, with its Austrian bcinner. The light 
smoke curled up from the batteries or hung upon the mountain 
side, like morning mists clearing off from the valley. In the 
brushwood, which covered the steep side of the defile near the fort, 
were stationed a number of Garibaldian Bersagliere. They kept 
up a constant fusilade upon the embrasures of the fort. To 
them the Austrians replied through the loop-holes ; but the two 
guns answered but seldom, as it would be needlessly exposing 
the lives of the artillerymen to have worked them, and they could 
not have carried with any degree of accuracy to the heights upon 
which the Italian artillery were placed. 

The noise was prodigious, for the mountains echoed and re- 
echoed the roar of the artillery in a prolonged roll like a peel of 
thunder, and the dropping fire of muskets filled up any interval that 
might occur. The practice of the guns was exceedingly good, 
but it appeared to have but little effect upon the fort — the long 
percussion shells of the twelve-pounders simply bursting like glass 
bottles against its solid masonry. 

For three days the bombardment continued. The delay was 
annoying, but it was the occasion of an incident that gave us a 
hearty laugh. On the morning that the bombardment commenced, 
a regiment started across the mountains with the intention of making 
a detour, and coming down on the road some miles in the rear of 
the fort. They lost their way, and for three days marched about 
among the mountains, subsisting solely upon some cattle they 
found grazing there, and brought down by their rifles. At the end 
of that time, they found themselves, to their astonishment, at the 
edge of a precipice, looking down upon Lago dTdro, some twelve 


io8 Camps and Qtcarters, 

miles down the valley, having gone in exactly the opposite 
direction to that which they had intended. 

On the morning of the fourth day, the little Austrian 
garrison surrendered. They were but 200 strong, and had only 
lost one man during the siege, but had had some twenty more 
or less seriously wounded. They had surrendered, not because the 
place had become untenable, for it was still practically uninjured, 
but because the men, many of whom were Venetians, had become 
discontented and mutinous, breaking into the wine-cellars and 
helping themselves until they were nearly drunk. The orders of 
the officer commanding were, that he was to hold the fort for six 
days, at the end of which time he would certainly be relieved ; but 
the conduct of the men had prevented his carrying out his instruc- 
tions, which he could otherwise have done without difficulty. 

We found that one of the two guns had been rendered useless 
upon the first day of the bombardment, its muzzle having been 
knocked off by a shell. The Austrians, however, had fired the 
other alternately from the two embrasures, so that the misfortune 
was not discovered until we took possession of the place. The 
Garibaldians exhibited a childish delight at their success, firing 
guns, cheering, and indulging in all sorts of demonstrations, as if the 
capture of a tiny fort with one gun, by an army nearly 30,000 strong, 
with forty field-pieces, was a feat almost unapproached in history. 

In the afternoon, some 15,000 men marched up the valley to the 
village of Triano de Sopra. We started early next morning. Soon 
after passing the fort of Ampola, we reached the head of the 
valley, from which point the water flows eastward into the Lago 
di Garda. When we had gone about five miles, we heard the 
distant boom of guns, and could distinguish a continued rattle of 
musketry. Presently we met an artillery officer riding at full 
speed. He was on his way to fetch up a battery of six guns we 
had passed on the road a mile back. Ten miles from Storo we 
reached the village of Triano, and as we entered it, witnessed an 
extraordinary scene. First two peasants rode by shouting some- 
thing, then at full speed three or four artillery waggons came 
thundering past. 

In an instant the Garibaldians, with whom the valley was 
crowded, and who were sitting about everywhere, seized their 
muskets, and caught up their kits, and made a headlong rush to 
the rear as fast as their legs could carry them. Women caught 
up their children and fled into the houses. Carters turned 
their horses’ heads, and jumping up, lashed them into a gallop. 

“ The Austrians are coming ! The Austrians are coming ! ” was 
the shout. As, however, the firing was at least a mile away, and 
there were fully 10,000 men between us, it was evident that 
the alarm was a false one. In the course of five minutes, the 
officers with drawn swords, loud shouts, and much gesticulation, 
succeeded in arresting the course of their men. A few minutes later, 


Out with the Red Shirts. 


109 

a mounted officer dashed from the village and ordered every man 
instantly to the front. 

We left our carriage here, and walked on. The confusion was 
tremendous ; the wounded were coming in thickly, many of them 
escorted by a most unnecessary number of their comrades, who 
were, however, sent back at once to the front by the mounted 
guides, who rode about sending every loiterer forward, or rather 
trying to do so, for many of them lay down behind the hedges or in 
the vineyards, and some were so completely unmanned, that they 
were crying like children. 

As we pushed on through the wounded and stragglers, I heard a 
woman’s voice, and looking through the hedge, saw a Vivandiere 
standing by a man who was sitting on the ground with his musket 
beside him, his hands over his face. I recognized them at once. 
It was the couple I had seen together in the streets of Storo. 
She was standing looking down upon the man with an' expression 
of bitter scorn. 

“ You coward ! ” she exclaimed. “ You wretched coward ! and it 
was you who were going to restrain your courage for my sake ! 
You coward ! I would rather a thousand times have seen you lying 
dead on the field. Never let me see you again. Go back to your 
shop and measure out your ribbons, it’s all you are fit for. Never 
speak to me again or look at me ; I am ashamed of myself that I 
should ever have loved one who isn’t even a man.” 

So saying, she turned abruptly, passed through a gap in the 
hedge, and went forward towards the front. A moment later a 
guide dashed through the vineyard, and striking the wretched lad 
with the flat of his sword, forced him to get up and return towards 
his regiment at the front. A little further on, I reached a point 
where I could see the battlefield. 

At daybreak, the 5th Regiment, 4000 strong, had advanced into 
the village of Bezzecca, which lay half a mile in front of me. Finding 
it unoccupied by the enemy, they advanced, and that so carelessly, 
that they did not even take the precaution of sending out skirmishers 
ahead. They had nearly reached the next village, when a heavy 
column of Austrians issued from a wood upon their flank, and 
would have cut them off had they not retreated at the top of their 
speed. They reached Bezzecca first, and there rallied, and the battle 
began. 

For an hour and a half it continued, and when we came up, the 
Garibaldians had just been driven from the village, and were still 
contesting the advance of the Austrians. The latter were, however, 
pushing on, issuing in a very heavy line of skirmishers from the 
village, keeping up a tremendous fire of musketry, and throwing 
rockets and an occasional shell among the retreating Italians. The 
two guns of the Royal Artillery, which had accompanied the 
column, had taken up a post on some elevated ground, 
and were keeping up a steady fire upon the advancing Austrians. 


no 


Camps and Quarters, 

Although the 5th had been reinforced by the other Garlbaldian 
regiments, they were giving ground fast. Their officers could be 
seen well in front of them, doing their utmost to get them to make 
a stand. 

It was evident that there were two very different classes of men 
among the Garibaldians : the one, and this was in a great minority, 
fought admirably, giving way foot by foot, clinging to every bit of 
cover, retiring with their faces to the foe, and keeping up a steady fire 

The majority had no fight in them, they huddled together, 
parties broke off and ran to the rear, and were only brought back 
again by the exertions of their officers. Whenever a shell burst 
near them, or a rocket came in their way, there was a disposition 
to break up altogether. The two guns were splendidly fought, but 
they could not maintain their exposed position ; three of the horses 
were killed and several wounded. Many of the men had fallen, 
and at last they were forced to retire and take up a position further 
back. The withdrawal of the guns was evidently considered by 
the Garibaldians on the left to be the signal for retreat, and they 
turned and ran back some hundred yards in a body before they 
were checked and brought up again ; but as the Austrians continued 
to advance, it was evident that in another few minutes the whole 
force would give way, and in that case a terrible disaster would 
have occurred, for the road was narrow, and would quickly have 
been blocked. 

Just at this moment, a gun boomed out behind us, another and 
another, and looking round, we saw that the battery of artillery we 
had passed on the road, had now arrived and come into action. 
Their practice was admirable ; the Austrians for a time con- 
tinued to advance, but not for long. The Garibaldians picked up 
courage upon the arrival of their artillery, pressed forward again, and 
slowly, step by step, the Austrians fell back to the village, from 
which they kept up a fire that soon arrested the Italian advance. 
Presently a house at the end of the village caught fire from the 
explosion of the shells ; it spread almost immediately to four 
or five of the adjoining houses, and a mass of red flame, which even 
the bright glare of the sun could not obscure, shot up. 

The houses in the Tyrolean villages are built almost entirely of 
wood, and their roofs, which are open at each end, are used as 
storage-places for hay, and had not the wind blown in the other 
direction, in less than half an hour the whole village would have 
been in ashes. P'or nearly an hour the fight continued in this 
way, the Garibaldians several times forming for the purpose of a 
rush at the village, but each time refusing to advance. At 
last a number of the most determined gathered themselves 
together, irrespective of regiments, and made a gallant charge 
forward. The rest followed, and the Austrian rear-guard — for we 
learned afterwards that the main body had retired an hour before 
— fell back at once. 


Out with the Red-Shirts, 


1 1 1 

There was no attempt at pursuit. For an hour or so, the guns 
kept up a fire at the next village, and then a party going forward, 
found that the Austrians had marched straight through to Riva, 
and so the battle of Bezzecca was at an end. We afterwards learnt 
that the Austrians had but little over 1 500 men engaged, while the 
Garibaldians had 10,000 men at Triano, of which about 6000 were 
actually engaged. Their loss was about fifty killed and three 
hundred and fifty wounded. No doubt the Garibaldians would 
have done better in time, and would have learnt to stand fire. 
They suffered from two disadvantages : one being that they were 
almost all young troops, the other that their companies were two 
hundred and fifty strong, with only one or two officers, who were 
powerless to restore order when confusion once set in. As it was, 
they never had a chance of improving, for a few days later the 
news came that an armistice had been arranged between Prussia 
and Austria, and the fighting came to an end on the south side of 
the Alps as on the north. 

I do not consider that the fact, that the Garibaldian Volunteers 
and the French Franc-Tireurs were almost worthless on the day of 
battle, detracts in any way from the value of our own volunteers. 
The latter are not a crowd of raw lads got together by a transient 
wave of enthusiasm, but men who have gone soberly and in a 
business-like sort of way to their work. The lads fresh from the 
militia fought at Waterloo as well as veterans, and I have a very 
strong opinion that in the day of battle, our volunteers would 
behave at least as well as the line. Indeed, they ought to do so, 
being drawn for the most part from a superior class, and having 
among them a considerable admixture of gentlemen. However, 
I do not suppose that any of us are likely ever to see that question 
solved by actual experiment. 



II2 


Camps and Quartos. 


That was the last of their stones that I heard, though I have no 
doubt they kept on just the same during the remaining three days 
they stopped in the house ; but I could not stand any more of it. I 
announced myself that evening as able to get to a room upstairs 
with my servant’s help, and once in bed, I stopped there till they 
were safely out of the house. When I found that they had gone, I 
came down, and thought that I was going to have Lucy all 
to myself again just as before, and I had quite made up my 
mind that before I went, I should get that question settled between 
her and me. But somehow or other, things didn’t go as I had ex- 
pected. Instead of praising me for the way I had borne with those 
three bores, Lucy chose to consider it as a personal grievance when 
I expressed my opinion freely about them, and even went so far as 
to say that it would be a good thing when I could get well enough 
to go out to the stables, for that I should feel more at home among 
horses and dogs than. with intelligent beings. 

I did begin once, the last day I spent there, but she took me up 
at once. “ That’s all nonsense. Jack ; we are very good friends, and 
I hope we shall always remain so ; but I have not the least idea in 
the world of marrying you. Your ideas and mine differ as widely 
as the poles, and one does want some sort of similarity in tastes in 
a husband.” That was what she said, and what was worse, she 
said it as if she meant it, and I do believe, upon m'y honour, that it 
was all because I could not see any point in those prosy stories told 
in Sir John’s study. She told me after they had gone, that the 
three fellows were war correspondents. I always hated writing 
fellows, and I shall hate them worse in future. If ever I get to be a 
General, and command an expedition, you will see I shall make 
short work of any of those correspondent fellows who hang about 
an army. I don’t hold much with our only General;” but I 
am with him down to the ground in regard to them. 


Price, 25 Cents 


MILITARY SKETCHES AND STORIES 




BY 

ARCHIBALD FORBES 

GEORGE HENTY 

AND 

r CHARLES WILLIAMS 

/ 


NEW YORK 

WARD, LOCK AND CO. 

35 Bond Street 
1 889 



Charles Lever’s Novels. 


12nio, Half-Persian Lwther, Mm*hled Sides 
Gilt Top, $1.00 each. 


1. Jack Hinton. 

2. Haery Loreequer. 

3. Tiee O’Donoghue. 

4. The Fortunes op Glencore. 

5. One of Them. 

6. Sir Jasper Caeew. 

7. A Day's Hide. 

8. Maurice Tierney. 

9. Barrington. 

10. LuTTREIiL OF ArRAN. 

11. Bent in a Cloud. 

12. Sir Brook Fossbrooke. 

13. The Bramleighs. 

14. Tony Butler. 


15. That Boy of Norcott’s. 

16. Lord Kilgobbin. 

17. Cornelius O’Dowd. 

18. Nuts and Nutcrackers. 

19. Tales of the Trains. 

20. Paul Goslett’s Confessions. 

21. Charles O’Malley. 

22. The Daltons. 

23. Knight of Gwynne. 

24. Dodd Family Abroad. 

25. Tom Burke. 

26. Davenport Dunn, 

27. Roland Cashel. 

28. Martins of Cro’ Martin. 


X. O O cSc OO-s 

35 Bond Street, New York. 


VICTOR HUGO’S NOVELS. 


lUrno, Half Leather, Cloth Sides, Marbled Edges, 
$1,00 each. 


1. Fantine (Les Miseeables). 

2, CoSETTE AND MaEIUS (DITTO). 


6. XJndee Sentence of Death. 

7. WoEKEES OP THE SeA. 

8. Ninety-Theee. 

9. Histoey of a Ceime. 

10. Han op Iceland. 


3. Jean Valjean (Les Miseeables). 

4. By the King’s Command. 

5. Hunchback op Notee Dame. 


unjfoum with the above. 


WILSON’S TALES OF THE BORDERS 
AND OF SCOTLAND. 


Four Volumes^ $4.00, 


HARRISON AINSWORTH’S NOVELS. 

Ten Volumes, $10.00. 

JANE AUSTEN’S NOVELS. 

Five Volumes, $5.00. 

IVAN TURGENIEFF’S NOVELS. 

Five Volumes, $5.00. 

ALSO UNIFORM. 

THE FKENOH KEVOLUTIOH. Complete in One Volume, $1.00. 

OLIVEE OEOMWELL’S LETTEES AHD SPEECHES. Complete in One Volume, 

$1.00. 

“SAETOE EESAETUS,” “HEEOES AND HEEO-WOESHIP,” and “PAST 
AND PEESENT.” Complete in One Volume, $1.00. 


LOCK & CO. 

35 Bond Street, New York. 


Anthony Trollope’s Novels 


12mo^ Saif Persian Leather^ Marbled Sides^ Gilt 
Top, $liOO each. 


1. Doctor Thorne. 

2. Macdermots of Ballycloran. 

3. Bacheij Bay. 

4. The Kellys and the O’Kellys. 

5. Tales of all Countries. 

6. Castle Bichmond. 

7. The Bertrams. 

8. Miss Mackenzie. 

9. Belton Estate. 

10. Lotta Schmidt. 

11. An Editor’s Tales. 

12. Balph the Heir. 

13. La Vendee. 

14. Lady Anna. 

15. Vicar of Bullhaivipton. 


16. Sir Harry Hotspur. 

17. Is He Popenjoy? 

18. An Eye for an Eye. 

19. Cousin Henry. 

20. Dr. Wortle’s School. 

21. Harry Heathcote. 

22. Orley Farm. 

23. Can You Forgive Her? 

24. Phineas Finn. 

25. He Knew He was Bight. 

26. Eustace Diamonds. 

27. Phineas Bbdux. 

28. The Prime Minister. 

29. The Duke’s Children. 

30. Ayala’s Angel. 



UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE. 

WHYTE-MELVILLE’S NOVELS. 

Nineteen Volumes, $19.00. 


HAWLEY SMART’S NOVELS. 

Nineteen Volumes, $19.00. 


HENRY KINGSLEY’S NOVELS. 

Fourteen Volumes, $14.00. 


■W-A. E.ID, X.OOK: <Sc OO,, 
35 Bond Street, New York. 


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